LIBRARY  SCHOOL 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  BOOK-COLLECTING. 


TAMERLANE 


»NO 


BT  A  BOSTONIAN. 


Young  bends  are  giddy,  and  young  hearts  are  warm, 
And  moke  mistakes  for  manhood  to  reform.— Cow  PER. 


BOSTON  : 

CALVIN  F  S.  .THOMAS.....PRINTER. 


1827. 


yfl^y^^ 


m 


Fae-*imiJc  of  original  cover  of  Poe's  Tamerlane. 
Frontispiece.  Seepage  138. 


THE    ROMANCE 


OF 


BOOK -COLLECTING 


BY 


J.     H.     SLATER, 

EDITOR  OF  '  BOOK  PRICES  CURRENT  ;'   AUTHOR  OF  '  EARLY  EDITIONS, 

'  ROUND  AND  ABOUT  THE  BOOKSTALLS,'  '  THE  LIBRARY  MANUAL,' 

•ENGRAVINGS  AND  THEIR  VALUE,'  ETC.,  ETC. 


LONDON : 

ELLIOT  STOCK,  62,  PATERNOSTER  ROW,  E.G. 
1898. 


LIBRA?,!  SCHOOL 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER.  PAGE 

I.   IN  EULOGY  OF  CATALOGUES          -  -I 

II.  A  COMPARISON  OF  PRICES               •  -  -        1 5 

III.  SOME   LUCKY  FINDS             -  '32 

IV.  THE   FORGOTTEN   LORE  SOCIETY-  -  -        50 
V.   SOME  HUNTING-GROUNDS  OF  LONDON    -  -        73 

VI.  VAGARIES  OF  BOOK-HUNTERS        -  -  '92 

VII.   HOW   FASHION   LIVES           -               -  -  -      112 

VIII.  THE   RULES  OF  THE  CHASE            -  -  -      126 

IX.  THE  GLAMOUR  OF  BINDINGS          -  -  -      140 

X.  THE  HAMMER  AND  THE  END         -  -  -      162 


CHAPTER  I. 

IN    EULOGY   OF   CATALOGUES. 

THERE  are  plenty  of  people — in  fact,  they 
are  in  the  great  majority  even  among 
bookish  men — who  regard  antiquated  sale- 
catalogues  in  the  light  of  so  much  rubbish,  and 
yet,  when  intelligently  consulted,  these  memorials 
of  a  bygone  day  not  only  have  their  uses,  but 
are  positively  interesting.  Truly  enough  they  are 
not  popular,  like  the  last  new  novel  which,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  has  taken  the  town  by 
storm,  and  it  would  not  pay  to  reprint  a  single 
one  of  them,  even  the  best  or  most  important 
that  has  ever  held  the  frequenters  of  auction- 
rooms  spell-bound. 

Sometimes  a  '  parcel '  will  be  sold  for  what  it 
will  fetch,  and  on  investigation  may  prove  to 
contain  a  few  simple  -  minded  pamphlets  on 
subjects  of  no  importance,  *  and  others,'  the 
latter  consisting  of  book-catalogues  of  the  last 
or  the  earlier  portion  of  the  present  century. 
This  happens  sufficiently  often  to  make  it  pos- 
sible for  a  bookish  enthusiast  of  an  antiquarian 


2      The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

turn  of  mind  to  lose  himself  with  marvellous 
rapidity  in  a  maze  of  old-time  dispersions.  But 
the  enthusiast,  unless  very  determined  indeed, 
knows  better  than  to  choke  his  library  with  such 
material.  He  is  aware  that  an  exhaustive  index 
is  indispensable  to  the  proper  appreciation  of  such 
literature,  and  to  make  that  would  occupy  his 
nights  indefinitely. 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  old  sale-catalogues 
of  books  are  consigned  for  the  most  part  to  the 
rubbish-heap,  or  perhaps  sent  to  the  mills,  to 
reappear  later  on  in  another  guise.  They  may 
be  scarce  in  the  sense  that,  if  you  wanted  a  par- 
ticular one,  it  could  only  be  got  with  great  diffi- 
culty, and  at  considerable  expense  (here  the  art 
of  selling  to  advantage  comes  in),  or  perhaps  not 
at  all.  This,  however,  makes  no  matter,  for  the 
fact  remains  that  such  things  are  not  inquired  for 
as  a  general  rule,  and  that  an  occasional  demand 
is  insufficient  to  give  them  any  kind  of  a  status 
in  the  world  of  letters. 

Some  five  or  six  years  ago  a  member  of  the 
Johnson  Club,  a  literary  society  which  meets  at 
intervals  in  various  parts  of  London,  but  more 
particularly  in  Fleet  Street,  discovered  a  catalogue 
of  the  sale  of  the  old  Doctor's  library,  neatly 
marked  with  the  prices  each  book  had  brought. 
Whether  this  was  a  sale  post  mortem  or  a  casual 
interlocutory  dispersal  at  the  instance  of  some 
soulless  creditor,  I  do  not  know.  In  any  case  the 
relic  was  a  find — a  fact  which  the  bookseller  who 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues 


bought  it  was  not  slow  to  appreciate,  for  he  at  once 
assessed  its  value,  to  the  society  man,  at  some- 
thing like  forty  shillings.  This  was  paid  without 
demur,  because  at  the  time  all  the  other  Johnson 
catalogues  were  in  mufti,  and  it  had  struck  no 
one  to  exhibit  them,  and  also  because  it  was, 
under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  a  very 
desirable  memorial  to  present  to  the  society 
which  flourishes  on  the  fame  of  the  great  lexico- 
grapher. Here,  at  any  rate,  is  one  exceptional 
instance  of  an  old  catalogue  possessing  a  distinct 
pecuniary  value  up  to  £2,  and  though  the 
noise  this  discovery  made  in  certain  circles  led 
to  a  general  search  and  the  rescue  of  other 
copies,  the  circumstances  are  not  in  the  least 
affected  on  that  account. 

From  a  literary  or  even  a  sentimental  stand- 
point, a  long  story,  full  of  speculation  and  romance, 
might  be  written  on  Dr.  Johnson's  long-forgotten 
catalogue.  We  might,  for  instance,  trace,  by  the 
aid  of  Boswell,  many  of  the  books  mentioned  in 
it  to  the  very  hand  of  the  master  himself.  We 
might  conjecture  the  use  he  made  of  this  volume 
or  that  in  his  '  Lives  of  the  Poets,'  '  The  Vanity 
of  Human  Wishes,'  or  in  the  ponderous  Dictionary 
that  cemented  his  fame,  and  by  way  of  interlude 
beguile  an  hour  occasionally  by  contrasting  the 
character  of  the  books  he  affected  with  the  quality 
of  those  on  the  shelves  of  some  modern  Johnson, 
assuming,  of  course,  that  his  counterpart  is  to  be 
found.  Then  we  might  look  at  the  prices  realized, 

1—2 


4       The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

and  compare  them  with  those  ruling  at  the 
present  day.  Some  books  then  in  fashion  are, 
we  may  be  sure,  now  despised  and  rejected,  others 
have  not  been  appreciably  affected  by  the  course 
of  time,  while  others,  again,  are  now  sought  after 
throughout  the  world,  and  are  hardly  to  be  met 
with  at  all.  There  is  no  old  catalogue  whatever 
which  is  not  capable  of  affording  considerable 
instruction  if  we  only  read  between  the  lines. 

Then,  again,  there  is  one  speculation  that  no 
true  book-lover  can  stifle ;  it  haunts  him  as  he 
passes  the  barrows  with  their  loads  of  sermons 
and  scholastic  primers,  and  it  is  this :  '  Time 
works  wonders.'  Some  day  may  not  this  hetero- 
geneous mass  of  rubbish  produce  as  fine  a  pearl 
as  ever  a  diseased  oyster  was  robbed  of?  May 
not  fashion  go  off  at  a  tangent,  and  dote  on 
lexicons  or  what  not  ?  There  have  been  men — 
Rossi,  for  example,  who  was  so  saturated  with 
the  suspicion  that  fashion  might  change  any 
moment  that  the  stalls  by  which  he  passed  were 
'  like  towns  through  which  Attila  or  the  Tartars 
had  swept,  with  ruin  in  their  train ' — who  would 
buy  any  book  whatever,  whether  they  wanted  it  or 
not,  on  the  bare  chance  of  someone  else  wanting 
it,  either  at  the  time  or  in  the  days  to  come. 

Such  may  be  the  outcome  of  a  too  eager  perusal 
of  catalogues,  focussed  till  it  produces  an  absorbing 
passion,  which  only  departs  with  life  itself.  After 
a  time  discrimination,  naturally  enough,  becomes 
impossible,  and  whole  masses  of  books  are  bought 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues 


up  for  what  they  may  become,  not  for  what  they  are. 
This  may  appear  to  be  an  ignoble  sort  of  pastime, 
but  in  reality  it  is  far  otherwise,  since  wholesale 
purchasers  of  this  stamp  are  invariably  well  read, 
and  know  more  about  their  author  than  his  mere 
name.  I  personally  was  acquainted  with  a  book- 
worm who  absorbed  whole  collections  at  a  time. 
His  house  was  full  of  books ;  they  were  under 
the  beds,  in  cupboards,  piled  up  along  the  walls, 
under  the  tables  and  chairs,  and  even  on  the 
rafters  under  the  roof.  If  you  walked  without 
due  care,  you  would,  more  likely  than  not,  tumble 
over  a  folio  in  the  dark,  or  bring  down  a  wall  of 
literature,  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  on  your  head. 
This  library  was  chaotic  to  the  general,  though 
the  worm  himself  knew  very  well  where  to  burrow 
for  anything  he  required,  and,  what  is  more  to 
the  point,  would  feed  for  hours  on  volumes 
that  few  people  had  ever  so  much  as  heard  of. 
The  monetary  value  of  his  treasures  did  not 
trouble  him,  though  one  of  his  favourite  anecdotes 
related  to  the  hunting  down  of  a  fourth  folio 
Shakespeare,  which,  after  much  haggling,  he  pur- 
chased for  a  song  from  a  poor  woman  who  lived 
in  an  almshouse.  When  the  delight  of  the  chase 
was  over,  he  recompensed  her  to  the  full  market 
value,  thereby  proving  that,  in  his  case  at  least, 
a  greed  for  books  does  not  necessarily  carry  with 
it  a  stifled  conscience.  Sad  to  relate,  this  biblio- 
phile died  like  other  men,  and  the  collection  of  a 
lifetime  came  to  the  inevitable  hammer.  Most 


6       The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

of  his  books  then  proved  to  be  portions  of  sets. 
If  a  work  were  complete  in,  say,  ten  volumes,  he 
would  perhaps  possess  no  more  than  five  or  six  of 
the  full  number  in  various  bindings  and  editions, 
while  others,  though  complete,  were  imperfect, 
and  many  were  in  rags.  Yet  among  the  whole 
there  were  some  pearls  of  great  price.  Even  in 
his  day  the  fashion  had  changed  in  his  favour. 

Now,  this  changing  of  fashion  which  is  always 
going  on  cannot  be  prophesied  at  haphazard,  or 
perhaps  even  at  all ;  but  if  there  is  a  way  of  fore- 
stalling it,  it  is  by  the  careful  comparison  of  prices 
realized  for  books  of  a  certain  kind  at  different 
periods  of  time,  and  this  can  only  be  accomplished 
by  a  study  of  catalogues.  The  book-man  likes  to 
think  that  history  repeats  itself  in  this  as  in  other 
matters,  and  that  what  has  happened  once  will 
probably  occur  again  in  process  of  time.  Nay, 
he  might,  without  any  great  stretch  of  credulity, 
persuade  himself  that  it  must  occur,  if  only  he 
live  long  enough.  That's  the  rub,  for  half  a 
dozen  lifetimes  might  not  be  sufficient  to  witness 
a  return  to  favour  of,  say,  the  ponderous  works  of 
the  Fathers,  which  were  in  such  great  demand  a 
couple  of  centuries  ago.  As  of  them,  so  of  many 
other  kinds  of  books  which  are  only  read  now  by 
the  very  few.  Some  day  they  will  rise  again  after 
their  long  sleep,  but  not  for  us. 

As  a  corollary  to  this  eulogy  of  catalogues,  let  us 
take  a  few  of  them  and  see  where  the  book-man's 
steps  are  leading  him.  In  his  wanderings  abroad 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues 


he  must  many  a  time  be  painfully  conscious  of 
the  fact  that  his  own  quest  is  that  of  everyone 
else  whose  tastes  are  similar  to  his  own.  Let  a 
first  edition  of  the  immortal  '  Angler '  so  much  as 
peep  from  among  the  grease  and  filth  of  a  rag- 
and-bone  shop,  and  a  magnetic  current  travels  at 
lightning  speed  to  the  homes  of  a  score  or  more 
of  pickers-up  of  unconsidered  trifles,  who  forth- 
with race  for  the  prize.  How  they  get  to  know 
of  its  existence  is  a  mystery.  Perhaps  some 
strange  psychological  influence  is  at  work  to 
prompt  them  to  dive  down  a  pestilential  alley  for 
the  first  and  last  time  in  their  lives.  Did  you 
ever  see  a  millionaire  groping  in  the  gutter  for  a 
dropped  coin  ?  His  energy  is  nothing  to  that  of 
the  book-man  who  has  reason  to  suspect — why 
he  knows  not — that  here  or  there  may  perhaps 
lie  hid  and  unrecognised  a  volume  which  fashion 
has  made  omnipotent.  And  his  energy  is  not 
confined  to  himself  alone,  for  one  decree  of  a 
naughty  world  changes  not — it  is  ever  the  same  : 
What  many  men  want,  more  men  will  search  for ; 
what  one  man  only  has,  many  will  want.  The 
path  of  the  book-hunter  is  trodden  flat  and  hard 
with  countless  footsteps,  and  this  is  the  reason 
why  it  is  so  unsatisfactory  to  look  specially  for 
anything  valuable. 

We  may  take  it,  therefore,  that,  though  hunt- 
ing for  books  may  be  a  highly  exhilarating 
pastime,  it  is  seldom  remunerative  from  a  pecu- 
niary point  of  view.  There  are,  no  doubt, 


8       The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

hundreds  of  thousands  of  good  and  useful  volumes 
which  can  be  bought  at  any  time  for  next  to 
nothing;  but  they  have  no  halo  round  them  at 
the  moment,  and  so  they  are  abandoned  to  their 
fate  by  the  typical  collector,  who  insists  not  only 
on  having  the  best  editions  in  exchange  for  his 
money,  but  that  his  books  shall  be  of  a  certain 
description — that  is  to  say,  of  a  kind  to  please  him, 
or  which  for  the  time  being  is  in  great  demand. 

And  men  are  pleased  at  various  times  by  books 
of  a  widely  different  character,  as  the  old  cata- 
logues tell  us  plainly  enough.  In  1676,  when 
William  Cooper,  bookseller,  dwelling  at  the  Sign 
of  the  Pelican  in  Little  Britain,  held  the  first 
auction  sale  ever  advertised  in  England — that 
of  the  library  of  Dr.  Lazarus  Seaman — works 
of  the  Fathers  and  Schoolmen ;  learned  and 
critical  volumes  of  distressing  profundity,  ap- 
pealed to  the  comparative  few  who  could  read 
and  write  sufficiently  well  to  make  reading  a 
pleasurable  occupation.  Poetry  is  absent  entirely. 
Shakespeare  and  Milton  are  elbowed  out  by 
Puritan  fanatics  who  fulminate  curses  against 
mankind.  No  doubt,  if  a  book-man  of  those  days 
had  been  asked  what  kind  of  literature  would 
be  in  vogue  a  couple  of  centuries  hence,  he 
would  have  pointed  to  Seaman's  collection  and 
replied,  '  Books  like  those  can  never  die.  So 
long  as  learning  holds  its  sway  over  the  few,  they 
will  be  bought  and  treasured  by  the  many.'  In 
this  he  would  have  been  wrong,  for  few  people 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues 


care  nowadays  for  volumes  such  as  these.  The 
times  have  changed  utterly,  and  we  with  them. 

At  this  same  sale  was  a  book  which  sold  for 
less  than  almost  any  other,  and  it  lay  hidden 
away  under  this  bald  and  misleading  title  : 
'  Veteris  et  Novi  Testamenti  in  Ling.  Indica, 
Cantabr.  in  Nova  Anglia.'  Simply  this,  and 
nothing  more.  No  statement  as  to  date,  condi- 
tion or  binding  appears  in  Cooper's  catalogue, 
and  yet  this  Bible  is  none  other  than  John  Eliot's 
translation  into  the  Indian  language,  with  a 
metrical  version  of  the  Psalms  in  the  same 
vernacular,  published  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  in 
1663-61.  An  auctioneer  of  the  present  day  would 
print  the  title  of  this  volume  in  large  capitals,  and 
tell  us  whether  or  no  it  had  the  rare  dedication  to 
King  Charles  II.,  of  pious  memory,  which  was 
only  inserted  in  twenty  copies  sent  to  England  as 
presents.  If  it  had,  then  this  book,  wherever  it 
may  be,  is  now  worth  much  more  than  its  weight 
in  gold,  for  at  Lord  Hardwicke's  sale,  held  in 
London  on  June  29,  1888,  such  a  desirable  copy 
was  knocked  down  for  £580. 

Why  this  immense  advance  in  price,  seeing 
that  probably  there  is  no  man  in  England  to-day 
who  could  read  a  single  line  of  John  Eliot's  free 
translation  ?  The  reason  is  plain.  Since  1661 
sleepy  New  England  has  vanished  like  the  light 
canoes  of  countless  Indians,  and  in  the  busy 
United  States  there  has  grown  up  a  great  demand 
for  anything  which  illustrates  the  early  history  of 


io      The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

North  America.  Had  such  a  contingency  struck 
old  Lazarus  Seaman,  he  would  have  made 
his  will  to  suit  the  exigences  of  the  case,  and 
perhaps  taken  more  interest  in  John  Eliot  and  his 
missionary  enterprises  than  anyone  did  at  the 
time,  or  has  done  since. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said  that  Seaman's  library 
must  have  been  of  a  special  kind,  one  which  such 
a  learned  divine  might  be  expected  to  gather 
within  his  walls  ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  this 
was  not  so.  Between  1676  and  1682,  October 
to  October  in  each  of  those  years,  exactly  thirty 
sales  of  books  were  held  by  auction  in  London, 
among  them  the  libraries  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby, 
Dr.  Castell,  the  author  of  the  '  Lexicon  Hepta- 
glotton/  Dr.  Gataker,  Lord  Warwick,  and  other 
noted  persons.  The  general  character  of  all  the 
seventeenth-century  catalogues  which  time  has 
spared  for  our  perusal  is  substantially  the  same. 
Every  one  of  them  reflects  the  taste  and  fashion 
of  the  day,  as  did  Agrippa's  magic  glass  the 
forms  of  absent  friends.  Still  harping  chiefly 
on  theology  !  as  Polonius  might  say,  these  cata- 
logues are  crammed  with  polemics  and  books  of 
grave  discourse.  Anything  which  could  not,  by 
hook  or  by  crook,  be  dragged,  as  to  its  contents, 
within  the  circumference  of  the  fashionable  craze, 
was  disposed  of  for  a  trifling  sum.  Even  in  1682 
the  learned  world,  or  at  least  our  narrow  corner 
of  it,  was  inhabited  almost  entirely  by  crop- 
eared  Puritans,  with  sugar-loaf  hats  on  their 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues  1 1 

heads  and  broad  buckles  to  their  shoes,  and 
by  Philosophers.  True  !  Cromwell  had  gone  to 
his  account,  and  Charles  II,  held  Court  at  St. 
James's  and  elsewhere,  but  the  King  and  his 
merry  companions  were  not  reading  men — un- 
less a  profound  knowledge  of  '  Hudibras,'  that 
book  which  Pepys  could  not  abide  the  sight 
of,  could  make  them  so.  The  anti- Puritans 
patronized  Butler,  and  doted  on  Sir  Charles 
Sedley,  the  Earl  of  Rochester  and  a  few  more, 
who  scribbled  love-verses  by  day,  and  gambled 
and  fought  and  'drank  at  night.  But  these  wor- 
shipped Thalia  and  Erato  only,  with  music  and 
dancing  and  other  delights,  and  knew  nothing  of 
solid  hard  work  by  the  midnight  oil.  They  had 
no  books  to  speak  of,  and  the  few  they  had  were 
light  and  airy  like  themselves,  and  for  the  most 
part  as  worthless. 

On  November  25, 1678,  a  great  sale  was  held  at 
the  White  Hart,  in  Bartholomew  Close.  The 
books  were  'bought  out  of  the  best  libraries 
abroad,  and  out  of  the  most  eminent  seats  of 
learning  beyond  the  seas,'  or,  more  truthfully,  had 
been  removed  from  the  shops  of  seven  London 
book-sellers  who  had  combined  to  '  rig '  the 
market.  Books  of  all  kinds  were  dispersed  at 
this  sale,  which  continued  de  die  in  diem  till  the 
heptarchy  was  satisfied.  Were  the  members  of 
this  pioneer  combination  alive  now,  they  would 
weep  to  think  that  they  gave  away  on  that  occa- 
sion —  practically  gave  away  —  scores  of  what 


1 2     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

have  long  since  become  aristocrats  among  books. 
Americana  were  there  in  plenty,  and  some  of  these 
are  now  so  extremely  rare  and  valuable  that  they 
are  hardly  to  be  procured  for  love  or  money ;  some 
few,  indeed,  have  completely  disappeared,  tossed 
lightly  aside,  probably  by  disgusted  purchasers,  or 
carted  back  again  to  the  shops  from  whence  they 
came,  to  be  stacked  once  more  till  they  perished 
utterly  of  damp  and  neglect,  moth,  mice  and  rust. 

On  the  other  hand  our  old  friends,  the  Puritans, 
revelled  in  grim  folios  bought  up  at  prices  which, 
the  change  in  the  value  of  money  notwithstanding, 
would  hardly  be  exceeded  now.  Walton's  '  Biblia 
Sacra  Polyglotta '  was  an  immense  favourite,  a 
distinction  it  doubtless  deserved,  and,  indeed, 
deserves  yet,  though  we  can  see  that  Walton 
must  have  '  gone  down '  woefully  in  the  last 
hundred  years,  when  we  come  to  calculate  the 
necessaries  of  life  that  could  be  bought  then  with 
a  piece  of  gold,  and  to  contrast  them  with  the 
meagre  display  such  a  sum  would  purchase  now. 
The  truth,  perhaps,  is  that,  although  education 
was  less  widely  diffused  in  the  days  of  the  Stuarts, 
it  was  more  deep  and  thorough.  A  savant  was 
then  like  a  huge  octopus  that  devastates  whole 
districts,  and  daily  grows  fatter  and  more  bloated 
at  the  expense  of  everything  that  moves  within 
reach  of  its  spreading  tendrils. 

To  this  effect  are  we  taught  by  these  ancient 
catalogues,  which,  however,  do  not  exhaust  all 
their  interest  in  mere  matters  of  prices  and 


In  Eulogy  of  Catalogues  1 3 

fashion.  We  can  learn  much  from  their  pages 
and  advertisements  of  the  manners  and  customs 
of  our  ancestors  in  Bookland.  It  seems  that 
there  were  travelling  auctioneers  a  couple  of 
centuries  ago  who  prefaced  their  remarks  with 
eulogies  of  the  Mayor  and  Corporation  of  each 
town  at  which  they  stopped,  by  way,  no  doubt,  of 
securing  their  patronage.  Sales  began  at  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  then,  and  went  on,  with  a 
mid-day  interval  for  refreshment,  until  late  at 
night.  Sometimes  the  auctioneer  sold  by  the 
candle-end  ;  that  is  to  say,  lit  a  morsel  of  candle 
on  putting  up  some  coveted  volume  for  competi- 
tion, and  knocked  it  down  to  him  who  had  bid 
the  most  when  the  light  flickered  out.  This  was, 
distinctly,  an  excellent  method  for  bolstering  up 
excitement,  for  every  splutter  must  have  been 
good  for  a  hasty  advance,  regretted  very  possibly 
when  the  modicum  of  tallow  entered  on  a  fresh 
lease  of  life.  When  not  selling  by  the  candle-end, 
an  auctioneer  would  dispose  of  about  thirty  lots 
in  the  course  of  an  hour,  and  was  quite  willing 
to  accept  the  most  trifling  bids.  Business 
is  more  rapidly  conducted  now,  for  few 
auctioneers  stop  to  curse  their  fate,  or  to  regale 
their  audience  with  anecdotes,  as  one  George 
Smalridge,  who  in  1689  wrote  and  published  a 
skit  on  the  prevalent  way  of  doing  business,  says 
was  quite  the  usual  custom  in  his  day.  His  tract 
is  written  in  Latin,  under  the  title  '  Auctio 
Davisiana,'  and  gives  a  fanciful  account  of  the 


1 4     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

extraordinary  proceedings  that  took  place  at  the 
sale  of  the  books  of  Richard  Davis,  an  ancient 
bookseller  of  Oxford,  who  had  fallen  into  the 
clutches  of  the  bailiffs.  The  auctioneer  commences 
with  a  dirge  said,  or  perhaps  sung,  over  the  miser- 
able Davis  :  *  O  the  vanity  of  human  wishes  !  O 
the  changeableness  of  fate  and  its  settled  unkind- 
ness  to  us,'  etc.  Each  book  is  extolled  at  length, 
and  there  are  pages  of  lamentation  and  woe  as 
Hobbes  of  Malmesbury,  his  '  Leviathan,'  '  a  very 
large  and  famous  beast,'  is  knocked  down,  by  mis- 
take, for  the  miserable  sum  of  five  pieces  of  silver. 
An  exhaustive  chapter  on  early  book  auctions 
would  necessarily  commence  with  the  dispersion  of 
the  stock  of  Bonaventure  and  Abraham  Elzevir 
at  Leyden  in  April,  1653 ;  but  the  Elzevirs  must 
look  to  themselves,  nor  are  these  remarks  in- 
tended to  be  even  approximately  full.  Rather  are 
they  discursive,  and  in  praise  of  catalogues  in 
the  mass ;  intended  merely  to  put  someone  else 
with  more  space  and  time  at  his  disposal  in  the 
way  of  rescuing  them  from  the  neglect  into  which 
they  have  fallen.  The  next  chapter  is  more 
specific,  for  in  that  we  will  take  a  very  famous 
sale  of  less  antiquity,  and  endeavour  to  draw 
comparisons  between  then  and  now.  And  these 
comparisons  will  perhaps  be  very  odious,  for  they 
will  necessarily  appeal  directly  to  the  cupidity  of 
every  bookworm  that  breathes,  to  every  book- 
hunter  who  prowls  around  in  search  of  rarities, 
and  returns  home — empty  handed. 


CHAPTER  II. 

A  COMPARISON    OF   PRICES. 

THE  important  sale  to  which  reference  was 
made  in  the  last  chapter  is  that  of  the 
library  of  John,  Duke  of  Roxburghe,  which 
was  dispersed  on  May  18,  1812,  and  forty-one 
following  days,  by  Robert  H.  Evans,  a  bookseller 
of  Pall  Mall.  This  sale  is  of  extreme  interest  for 
two  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  the  collection 
was  the  most  extensive,  varied,  and  important 
that  had  hitherto  been  offered  for  sale  in  England, 
or,  indeed,  anywhere  else ;  and,  secondly,  it  may 
fairly  be  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  connecting- 
link  between  the  old  state  of  things  and  the  new. 
The  Roxburghe  library  was  not  '  erected,'  as 
Gabriel  Naudseus  has  it,  on  traditional  principles ; 
it  was  of  a  general  character  that  appealed  to  all 
classes  of  book-men.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was 
not  quite  such  a  library  as  a  collector  of  large 
means  might  be  expected  to  get  together  at  the 
present  day,  for  the  tendency  is  now  to  specialize, 
and  in  any  case  many  of  the  books  that  the  Duke 
obviously  took  an  interest  in  are  of  such  little 


1 6     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

importance  now,  and  so  infrequently  inquired  for, 
that  they  would  most  assuredly  be  refused  admis- 
sion to  any  private  library  of  equal  importance 
and  magnitude.  Even  a  general  lover  would 
hardly  be  likely  to  manifest  much  interest  in  a 
number  of  volumes  on  Scots  law  or  to  hob-a-nob 
with  Cheyne,  who  in  1720  wrote  a  book  on  the 
gout,  or  with  Sir  R.  Blackmore,  notwithstanding 
that  eminent  physician's  great  experience  of  the 
spleen  and  vapours.  That  lore  of  this  kind  has 
its  merits  I  dispute  in  no  way,  but  it  is  not 
exactly  of  a  kind  to  interest  the  modern  collector, 
who,  even  if  he  aim  at  all  branches  of  literature 
alike,  would  much  prefer  to  have  his  legal  and 
medical  instruction  boiled  down,  so  to  speak,  to 
the  compass  of  a  good  digest  or  cyclopaedia. 

Nevertheless,  May  18,  1812,  is  among  the 
fasti  of  those  who  to  a  love  of  letters  add  a 
passion  for  books.  It  is  the  opening  day  of  the 
new  regime — the  birthday,  in  fact,  of  those  who 
revel  in  first  editions  and  early  English  texts. 
Brunet  said  that  the  'thermometer  of  bibliomania* 
— objectionable  word! — 'attained  its  maximum 
in  England '  during  these  forty-two  days  of  cease- 
less hammering,  and  Dibdin  went  perfectly  insane 
whenever  he  thought  of  this  '  Waterloo  among 
book-battles,'  as  he  called  it.  Everyone  of  course 
knows  the  chief  episode;  that  struggle  between 
Earl  Spencer  and  the  Marquis  of  Blandford  for 
the  1471  Boccaccio,  in  its  faded  yellow  morocco 
binding,  and  how  the  latter  carried  it  off  for 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  17 

£2,260,  a  most  idiotic  price  to  pay,  as  subsequent 
events  abundantly  proved  ;  for  seven  years  later, 
when  Lord  Blandford's  library  came  to  be  sold, 
the  coveted  volume  was  acquired  by  his  former 
rival  for  considerably  less  than  half  the  money. 
In  now  reposes  in  state  at  Manchester,  or,  as 
some  choose  to  say,  is  in  prison  there,  though  it 
is  perhaps  too  much  to  expect  that  all  good 
things  should  be  forcibly  removed  to  London,  as 
some  greedy  Metropolitans  wish  them  to  be. 

The  Duke  of  Roxburghe's  library  comprised 
rather  more  than  10,000  works  in  about  30,000 
volumes,  and  the  auctioneer's  method  of  classify- 
ing this  large  assortment  was  so  peculiar  that  he 
feels  constrained  to  apologize  for  it  in  a  rather 
extensive  preface. 

'  For  instance,'  says  he,  '  the  Festyvale  of 
Caxton,  printed  in  two  columns,  of  which  no 
other  copy  is  at  present  known,  may  be  found 
classed  with  a  small  edition  of  the  Common 
Prayer  of  one  shilling  value.' 

The  '  Festyval '  brought  £105,  and  the  little 
Prayer-Book,  which  proves  to  have  been  printed  at 
London  in  1707,  8s.  6d.,  which  is  more  than  it 
would  be  at  all  likely  to  sell  for  now.  But  what 
about  Caxton's  lordly  tome ;  how  much  might 
that  be  expected  to  bring  in  case  it  should  once 
again  find  its  way  into  the  open  market  ?  Judging 
from  the  present  price  of  Caxtons,  perhaps  five 
or  six  times  the  money  would  not  be  an  impos- 
sible figure,  but  there  is  no  telling.  It  might 


1 8    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

bring  more,  even  though  it  has  the  misfortune  to 
belong  to  the  second  edition,  for  only  six  copies 
are  known,  and  several  of  those  are  imperfect. 
Of  the  first  edition  of  1483,  only  three  perfect 
copies  are  to  be  met  with,  and  that  is,  of 
course,  quite  a  different  matter.  The  auctioneer 
need  not,  as  it  happens,  have  sought  to  excuse 
himself  so  energetically  for  placing  good  and 
bad  books  side  by  side,  for  the  whole  catalogue 
is  arranged  under  subjects,  and  to  do  other- 
wise would  have  been  manifestly  impossible.  He 
might,  however,  have  entered  somewhat  more 
fully  into  detail  as  to  condition  and  binding,  for 
some  of  the  books  were,  confessedly,  '  thumbed  to 
tatters,'  and  a  suspicion  that  this  or  that  '  lot 
may  be  so  afflicted  lurks  in  every  page  of  the 
catalogue. 

The  first  book  brought  to  the  hammer  at  this 
sale  ;  the  preliminary  bombshell  which,  to  pursue 
Dibdin's  metaphor,  was  the  signal  for  a  furious 
cannonade,  consisted  of  the  '  Biblia  Sacra  Grseca,' 
printed  by  Aldus  in  1518.  This  is  the  first  com- 
plete edition  of  the  Bible  in  Greek,  and  an  im- 
portant book  on  that  account.  It  brought  £4  155., 
and  any  book-hunter  might  heartily  pray  for  half 
a  dozen  copies  now,  on  the  same  terms,  for  the 
present  auction  value  runs  to  about  six  times  as 
much.  In  fact,  a  sound  copy  sold  only  the  other 
day  for  £27.  So,  too,  Schoiffer's  Latin  Bible, 
printed  at  Mayence  in  1472,  folio,  would  be  con- 
sidered cheap  now  at  £8  8s.,  assuming  nothing  was 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  1 9 

wrong  with  it.  In  1893  a  copy  in  oak  boards 
brought  £20  exactly.  On  the  other  hand,  Basker- 
ville's  Bible,  Cambridge,  1763,  was  excessively 
dear  at  £  10  155.,  seeing  that  a  very  fair  copy  can 
be  got  at  the  present  time  for  about  £i  IDS. 
Collectors  of  Bibles  are  responsible  for  much  of 
the  terrible  confusion  that  takes  place  when  we 
begin  to  draw  comparisons  in  matters  of  filthy 
lucre.  If  a  Bible  come  from  a  noted  press,  or  is  an 
original  edition  of  its  version,  or  very  old  indeed, 
then  up  goes  the  price,  especially  if  it  be  printed 
in  English.  One  would  have  thought  that  Bas- 
kerville  being  an  Englishman,  and  a  fine  printer 
in  his  way,  would  have  been  good  for  much  more 
than  £i  los.  But  no;  he  has  not  been  dead  long 
enough,  for  the  collectors  have  made  it  a  rule  that 
no  English  Bible  printed  after  1717  is  any  good  at 
all,  and  consequently  that  the  '  Vinegar  Bible  '  is 
the  last  book  of  the  kind  in  point  of  date  worth 
looking  at,  unless,  indeed,  exception  be  made  in 
favour  of  one  of  the  six  large-paper  copies  of 
Bentham's  Cambridge  Bible  of  1762,  which  are 
reported  to  have  luckily  escaped  a  conflagra- 
tion. The  late  Mr.  Dore,  who  was  a  strong 
man  on  the  subject  of  old  Bibles,  says  that  a 
little  research  would  reveal  the  existence  of  many 
more  than  the  traditional  half-dozen  copies,  so 
perhaps,  after  all,  the  conflagration  is  a  myth. 
But  if  Baskerville's  Bible  brought  what  we  should 
now  consider  to  be  an  outrageous  sum,  what  shall 
be  said  of  '  The  Holy  Bible,  illustrated  with 

2^-2 


20    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

Prints,  published  by  T.  Macklin,  six  volumes, 
folio,  1800,'  which  went  for  £43,  incomplete 
though  it  was.  Some  £2  los.  for  the  whole  seven 
volumes  is  not  at  all  an  uncommon  auction  price 
at  the  present  day,  and  this  amount  and  more 
would  most  certainly  be  swallowed  up  by  the 
binding  alone.  What  it  comes  to  is  that  among 
all  these  books  of  theology,  Biblical  comment, 
criticism,  polemics,  sermons,  and  works  of  the 
Fathers,  prices  have  fallen  since  1812,  except  in 
those  cases  where  collectors  have  stepped  in  to 
rescue  old  Bibles,  works  associated  with  some  great 
religious  revolution,  or  specimens  of  rare  typo- 
graphy from  the  presses  of  old  and  noted  printers. 

For  instance,  there  was  here  another  Caxton 
called  '  The  Prouffytable  boke  for  Mane's  Soul,1- 
folio,  described  as  '  a  beautiful  copy,'  which  went 
for  £140,  and  *A  Lytell  Treatyse  called  Lucy- 
darye,'  4to.,  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  which  brought 
£  10.  During  the  last  dozen  years  the  former  book 
has  appeared  twice.  At  the  Earl  of  Aylesford's 
sale  in  March,  1888,  it  brought  (in  company  with 
'  The  Tretyse  of  the  Love  of  Jhesu  Christ,'  by 
Wynkyn  de  Worde,  1493)  £305,  and  in  July,  1889, 
an  inferior  copy,  badly  wormed,  sold  for  £100. 

These  are  the  sort  of  books  beloved  by  large 
public  libraries,  which  are  fast  swallowing  up 
the  few  that  remain.  From  a  pecuniary  point  of 
view  it  would  perhaps  pay  some  rich  book-hunter 
of  the  Lenox  type  to  buy  up  everything  of  the 
kind  he  could  lay  his  hands  on,  though  the  worst 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  21 

of  speculations  such  as  these  is  that  the  interest 
on  the  money  invested  has  a  tendency  to  swell 
the  principal,  and  so  to  add  enormously  to  the 
original  cost. 

Among  books  that  have  gone  down  in  price 
since  the  Duke  of  Roxburghe  made  his  famed 
collection  are  those  classical  works  of  the  ancients 
which  were  at  that  time  all  the  rage.  Virgil  is 
no  longer  a  name  to  conjure  with,  unless  he 
happen  to  rank  as  a  sound  copy  of  the  editio 
princeps.  The  first  edition  of  Virgil  was  printed 
by  Sweynheym  and  Pannartz  at  Rome,  without 
date  (1469  ?),  and  the  Duke,  notwithstanding  the 
search  of  a  lifetime,  never  came  across  a  copy  of 
that.  Not  more  than  seven  copies  can  now  be 
traced,  and  only  two  of  these  have  come  to  the 
hammer  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  One, 
though  imperfect,  realized  4,101  francs  at  the  La 
Valliere  sale  held  at  Paris  in  1784,  and  the  other 
£590  at  the  Hopetoun  House  sale  at  London  in 
February,  1889.  Then  Homer  is  also  a  most 
desirable  companion  if  he  happen  to  have  been 
printed  at  Florence,  in  two  volumes,  folio,  1488. 
About  jfioo  is  his  price  under  those  circum- 
stances. Speaking  generally,  however,  unless  the 
printer  comes  to  the  rescue  of  a  Greek  or  Latin 
classic,  it  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  fallen  on  an 
unappreciative  generation.  Scores  upon  scores 
of  volumes,  the  very  flowers  of  classic  days,  edited 
by  Cunningham,  Heyne,  Porson,  and  other  first- 
rate  scholars  of  the  last  century,  are  to  be  met 


22     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

with  in  this  bulky  catalogue  at  sums  varying  from 
£2  to  £3  each.  In  an  old  book  of  this  class,  a 
copy  of  Epictetus,  edited  by  Heyne,  and  pub- 
lished at  Dresden  in  1756,  was  a  slip  of  paper 
with  a  memorandum  of  the  price  at  which  it  had 
been  purchased  in  1760.  It  was  a  bookseller's 
bill  for  £ i  I2s.,  made  out  to  one  '  Mr.  Richard 
Cosgrove,'  doubtless  a  good  customer  in  his  day. 
I  have  the  book  now,  and  it  cost  me  fourpence,  as 
much  as  it  was  worth.  At  the  Duke  of  Rox- 
burghe's  sale  a  copy  of  this  same  edition  brought 
£  i  45.  This,  no  doubt,  is  rather  an  extreme  case, 
but  it  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  general  principle 
sought  to  be  enunciated,  namely,  that  eighteenth- 
century  classics  are,  for  the  most  part,  but  waste- 
paper,  for  the  simple  reason  that  only  a  compara- 
tively small  number  of  people  can  read  them. 
The  learning  of  the  schools  may  be  deep  and 
thorough — to  assert  the  contrary  would  be  to 
offend  many  excellent  scholars  of  our  own  day ; 
but  it  is  nevertheless  extremely  probable,  to  say 
the  least,  that  there  are  more  books  of  the  kind 
than  there  is  any  demand  for,  and  so  they  litter 
the  stalls,  braving  the  wind  and  rain,  till  they  are 
rescued  by  the  merest  chance  and  given  house- 
room  for  a  brief  space. 

In  the  opinion  of  many  collectors  the  word 
*  poetry  '  only  embraces  English  verse  of  a  certain 
period,  or  written  by  certain  people.  The  Duke's 
library  was  particularly  rich  in  ancient  English 
verse,  lyric  and  dramatic,  and  some  of  the  prices 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  23 

realized  were  very  high.  Webbe's  '  A  Discourse 
of  English  Poetrie,'  4to.,  1586,  brought  £64, 
and  '  The  Paradyse  of  Daintie  Devises,'  4to., 
1580,  £55.  A  curious  collection  of  some  thou- 
sands of  ancient  ballads,  in  three  large  folio 
volumes,  sold  for  £477  155.  This  collection, 
which  was  stated  to  be  the  finest  in  England, 
was  originally  formed  for  the  celebrated  library 
of  the  Earl  of  Oxford  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  was  even  then  supposed 
to  excel  the  Pepys  collection  at  Cambridge.  It 
came  from  the  Harleian  Library,  and  was  pur- 
chased and  afterwards  largely  added  to  by  the 
Duke,  who  managed  to  secure  a  ballad  printed  by 
Leprevik  at  Edinburgh  in  1570,  a  ballad  quoted 
in  '  Hamlet,'  of  which  no  other  copy  was  known 
to  exist,  and  many  other  extraordinary  rarities. 
Dibdin  was  present  when  the  '  poetry  '  was  com- 
peted for,  and  bought  several  hundred  pounds' 
worth  of  books,  either  on  his  own  or  somebody 
else's  account,  the  whole  of  which  he  could  easily 
have  stowed  away  in  his  capacious  pockets. 

Naturally  enough,  the  works  of  Shakespeare 
would  first  be  turned  to  by  anyone  who  held  this 
catalogue  in  his  hand  for  the  first  time.  There 
are  nearly  three  pages  of  closely  printed  entries 
referring  to  the  great  dramatist,  and  the  only 
conclusion  that  can  be  arrived  at  is  that  in  1812 
the  early  quartos  must  have  been,  if  not  exactly 
common,  at  any  rate  of  no  great  rarity.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  argue  that  Shakespeare  was  not 


24     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

then  appreciated,  for  the  contrary  is  well  known 
to  have  been  the  fact.  The  late  Mr.  Halliwell- 
Phillipps  in  after-years  talked  of  picking  up  early 
quartos  for  a  few  shillings  each,  and  lamented 
that,  for  some  mysterious  reason  which  he  found 
himself  unable  to  explain,  they  had  suddenly 
become  scarce.  Very  likely  he  himself  had 
excited  a  keen  desire  to  possess  them  in  the 
breasts  of  those  who  read  his  numerous  books,  or 
— publish  it  not  in  Gath  ! — the  bulk  of  them  may 
have  fallen  into  unappreciative  hands,  and  been 
used  to  light  the  fires  withal. 

However  this  may  be,  the  early  Shakespearian 
quartos,  now  of  great  price,  were  disposed  of  at 
the  Roxburghe  sale  for  only  a  little  more,  and 
occasionally  for  less,  than  the  first  editions 
of  Marlowe,  Massinger,  and  several  other  of  the 
chief  Elizabethan  dramatists.  A  copy  of  the  first 
folio  sold,  it  is  true,  for  .£100,  but  the  second  only 
brought  £15,  the  third  £35,  and  the  fourth  £6  6s. 
This  record,  in  the  face  of  £84  for  Boydell's 
edition  in  nine  volumes,  folio,  1802 — a  work  which 
may  now  be  expected  to  sell  for  £5  or  £6,  even 
with  some  of  the  illustrations  after  Smirke  and 
others  in  proof  state — is  most  extraordinary. 

But  let  us  get  to  the  quartos  and  compare  the 
prices  of  then  and  now.  The  first-named  are  those 
realized  at  the  Roxburghe  sale  ;  those  in  brackets 
are  modern,  and  authenticated  with  dates  and 
items  complete.  There  is  more  scope  for  reflec- 
tion here,  and  a  whole  volume  might  be  written 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  25 

on  the  mutability  of  fashion.  '  Much  a-doe  about 
Nothing,'  first  edition,  4to.,  London,  1600, 
£2  173.  (the  Gaisford  sale,  April  23,  1890,  £130) ; 
'A  Midsommer  Night's  Dreame,'  first  edition, 
4to.,  1600,  £3  35.  (ibid.,  £116) ;  '  The  Merchant 
of  Venice,'  by  Roberts,  first  edition,  4to.,  1600, 
£2  145.  (the  Cosens  sale,  November  n,  1890, 
£270) ;  *  Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre,'  4to.,  1619, 
55.  (the  Lakelands  Library,  March  12,  1891,  £37) ; 
'  Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre/  4to.,  1635,  145. 
(ibid.,  £15);  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  second,  or  first 
complete  edition,  4to.,  1599,  £12  I2S.  (the 
Perkins  sale,  July  10,  1889,  £164) ;  '  King  Lear,' 
4to.,  1608,  £6  I2s.  (the  Brayton-Ives  sale,  New 
York,  March  5,  1891,  $425);  '  Sir  John  Oldcastle,' 
first  edition,  4to.,  1600,  195.  (the  Gaisford  sale, 
April  23,  1890,  £46). 

These  modern  prices  are  small  in  comparison 
with  what  might  have  been,  for  none  of  the  copies 
above  mentioned  were  in  the  finest  condition.  If 
we  want  first-rate  records  we  must  go  further 
back — to  the  Daniell  sale,  for  instance,  held  in 
1864,  when  thousands  of  pounds  were  paid  as  a 
matter  of  course  for  a  selection  of  these  little 
quarto  volumes,  which  had  successfully  eluded 
the  greasy  fingers  of  generations  of  playgoers,  the 
fires  of  disgusted  Puritans,  and  the  ignorance  of 
our  own  people.  Never  shall  we  see  nearly  three 
thousand  distinct  lots  of  English  poetry  as  pre- 
viously defined  disposed  of  at  one  single  sale  again, 
never  again  will  prices  rule  so  low.  Many  of  these 


2.6     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

books  are  not  to  be  met  with  at  all  in  our  genera- 
tion, no  matter  what  price  may  be  offered  for  them, 
seeing  that,  as  an  old  book-hunting  friend  used  to 
say,  they  have  become  '  scandalously  uniquitous.' 
In  addition  to  early  English  texts,  the  great 
Duke  had  amassed  a  splendid  collection  of 
romances  of  the  Quixotic  school,  known  in  polite 
circles  as  the  Table  Ronde.  He  was  not  con- 
tent, it  seems,  with  the  printed  editions,  but  also 
collected  many  manuscripts  on  vellum,  illus- 
trated with  beautiful  illuminations.  Among 
these  curious  manuscripts  were  several  which 
had  been  used  and  translated  by  the  celebrated 
Walter  de  Mapes  for  the  entertainment  of 
his  Sovereign,  Henry  II.  The  printed  books  of 
this  character,  some  of  which  occasionally,  though 
very  rarely,  gladden  the  hearts  of  romantic  biblio- 
philes, included  the  twenty-four  small  volumes 
recounting  the  exploits  of  Amadis  of  Gaul, 
published  at  Lyons  and  Paris  in  1577,  etc.,  and 
also  several  duplicates,  £16  i6s.  A  fairly  good 
set,  without  the  duplicates,  brought  £4  45.  in 
April,  1887 — a  dreadful  drop,  considering  the 
demand  there  is  for  books  of  the  kind.  Still, 
this  particular  work  has  undoubtedly  fallen,  for 
another  copy  produced  only  £6  the  June  following. 
Nor,  should  I  imagine,  would  '  L'Histoire  du 
Noble  Chavelier  Berinus/  a  quarto  book  printed 
at  Paris,  without  date,  sell  for  as  much  as  £7  75. 
at  the  present  time,  or  '  Le  Livre  de  Beufves  de 
Hautonne,'  folio,  Paris,  1502,  for  £13  135.,  or 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  27 

'  L'Histoire  Merveilleuse  du  Grand  Chan  de 
Tartarie/  folio,  1524,  for  £22. 

The  twelve  pages  devoted  to  the  enumeration 
of  works  of  chivalry  and  romance  glow  with  the 
martial  achievements  of  Palmerin  of  England, 
Godeffroy  de  Boulion,  Perceforest,  Roy  de  la 
Grande  Bretaigne,  Perceval  le  Galloys,  and  scores 
of  other  champions  who  went  about  rescuing 
damsels  in  distress,  sleeping  in  enchanted  castles, 
and  challenging  the  whole  civilized  race  of  men, 
one  at  a  time,  to  mortal  combat.  Perceforest,  by 
the  way,  in  six  folio  volumes,  Paris,  1528,  went 
for  £30,  a  fact  worthy  of  note,  inasmuch  as 
another  copy  sold,  a  few  months  ago,  for  -£  10  los. 
Of  all  the  knights  of  ancient  days,  the  regal  Perce- 
forest was  the  least  worthy  of  credence,  which  is 
saying  a  great  deal.  His  folios  bristle  with 
dragons,  necromancers  of  the  worst  type,  heroic 
rescues,  combats  with  giants,  devils,  and  all  kinds 
of  monsters  who  strove,  and  in  vain,  to  destroy 
this  past-master  of  Quixotic  enterprise.  That 
such  books  did  at  one  time  exercise  considerable 
influence  over  adventurous  spirits  is  undoubted. 
They  were  the  only  novels  of  the  day,  the  only  bit 
of  light  reading  to  be  had  in  the  interval  between 
one  tourney  and  another. 

Passing  by  a  large  and  almost  complete  collec- 
tion of  the  separately  published  works  of  Robin 
Greene,  that  unfortunate  who  bought  a  groat's 
worth  of  wit  with  a  million  of  repentance,  we 
come  to  the  Voyages  and  Travels,  and  note,  as 


28     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

before,  the  differences  in  prices.  Hakluyt's  *  Col- 
lection of  Voyages,'  2  vols.,  folio,  1589-99,  brought 
£4  145.  6d.  (the  Holding  sale,  January  17,  1895, 
£16 ;  the  Langham  sale,  June  19,  1894,  £375, 
second  edition,  3  vols.,  folio,  which  contained 
the  map  by  Molyneux,  of  which  only  twelve 
copies  are  known.  This  copy  belonged  to  the 
first  issue,  without  the  cartouche  about  Sir 
Francis  Drake,  which  was  subsequently  added)  ; 
*  Hakluytus  Posthumus ;  or,  Purchas  his  Pil- 
grimes/  5  vols.,  folio,  1625-26,  £42  (the  Toovey 
sale,  February  26,  1894,  £ 51)  ;  '  Sir  Francis 
Drake  Revived,'  1652,  and  '  The  World  Encom- 
passed by  Sir  Francis  Drake,'  1652,  the  two 
pieces  75.  (the  Hawley  sale,  July  2,  1894,  £6  55.) ; 
4  Cooke's  Voyages,'  8  vols.,  4to.,  1773-84,  with 
the  large  plates  bound  in  two  folio  volumes,  .£63 
(December  5,  1893,  at  Christie's,  £3  125.,  and  on 
many  other  occasions  for  about  the  same  amount) ; 
Eden's  '  History  of  Travayle  in  the  West  and 
East  Indies,'  London,  1577,  £6  los.  (the  Thornhill 
sale,  April  15,  1889,  £  10  55. ;  the  Wimpole 
Sale,  June  29,  1888,  £18  IOS-»  original  binding) ; 
Vancouver's  *  Voyage  of  Discovery  to  the  North 
Pacific  Ocean/  3  vols.,  4to.,  and  folio  atlas  of 
plates,  1798,  £8  i8s.  (the  Holding  sale,  January 
17,  1895,  £5  53.).  It  would  be  more  than  tedious 
to  pursue  this  comparative  analysis  further. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  as  a  rule  the  prices  realized  in 
1812  for  books  of  travel  were  greater  than  would 
be  realized  now  under  similar  circumstances, 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  29 

especially  when  the  journeys  undertaken  were 
about  the  foot-worn  Continent  of  Europe  or  in 
the  various  English  counties.  Pennant's  '  Journey 
from  Chester  to  London,'  for  example,  is  now  a 
book  of  small  account,  yet  the  Duke  of  Roxburghe's 
copy  sold  for  £7  155. 

Works  relating  to  America  are,  curiously  enough, 
almost  absent  from  the  Duke's  catalogue,  and  it 
may  fairly  be  taken  for  granted  that  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century  no  one  cared  much 
about  them.  This  will  explain  the  extreme 
scarcity  of  many  of  these  books  now,  for  what 
people  think  lightly  of  they  take  no  care  to  pre- 
serve. Hundreds  and  thousands  of  Americana 
must  have  been  torn  to  fragments  or  otherwise 
destroyed  in  past  days.  Often  of  small  size,  they 
would  escape  the  notice  of  lovers  of  folios,  nor  is 
their  general  appearance  sufficiently  imposing  to 
appeal  to  those  who  value  a  book  strictly  in  pro- 
portion to  its  external  beauty.  The  Duke  had 
only  a  few  works  of  travel  in  any  way  relating  to 
America,  and  as  the  list  may  be  interesting,  I  have 
thought  it  best  to  transcribe  it  verbatim  et  literatim  : 

Schmidel  'Navigatio  in  Americam,'  4to.,  Norib., 

i599>  £i  6s. 
Las  Casas's  '  Discoveries,  etc.,  of  the  Spaniards 

in  America,'  Lond.,  1699,  35.  6d. 
'  History    of   the    Bucaniers   of   America,'    4to., 

Lond.,  1684,  £2  6s. 
Hennepin's     '  Discoveries     in     America/    8vo., 

Lond.,  1698,  33. 


30     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

'  Voyage  dans  1'Amerique/  par  La  Hontan,  2  vols., 
8vo.  La  Haye,  1703,  and  '  Dialogues  avec  un 
Sauvage  de  I'Amerique,'  par  La  Hontan,  8vo., 
Amst.,  1704,  the  two  volumes  75.  6d. 

Hontan's  '  Voyages  to  North  America,'  2  vols., 
8vo.,  Lond.,  1735,  6s.  6d. 

Joutel's  '  Voyage  to  the  Missisippi,'   8vo.,  Lond., 

1714.  4s. 
Jones'  *  Present  State  of   Virginia/    8vo.,   Lond., 

1724,  2s. 
Carver's  '  Travels   in  N.  America/    with   plates, 

8vo.,  Lond.,  1778,  los. 
Long's    '  Voyages  and    Travels    in  N.  America/ 

4to.,  Lond.,  1791,  us.  6d. 
Mackenzie's     '  Voyages    in    N.     America/    4to., 

Lond.,  1801,  £i  6s. 
Martyr's    '  Historic    of    the  West   Indies/   4to., 

Lond.,  1612,  £3  75. 
'  Histoire    des    Antilles/    par   Pere    du    Tertre, 

3  vols.,  4to.,  Paris,  1667,  etc.,  -£2  2S. 
Blome's    '  Description    of  Jamaica/    etc.,    8vo., 

Lond.,  1678,  8s. 
Gage's  *  Travels  in  America  and  the  W.  Indies, 

8vo.,  Lond.,  1699,  2s.  6d. 
Wafer's     '  Description      of     the      Isthmus     of 

America/  8vo.,  Lond.,  1699,  93. 
'  Collectio    Peregrinationum    in    Indiam   Orien- 

talem  et  in  Indiam  Occidentalem,  19  partibus 

comprehensa,    cum     multis    figuris     Fratrum 

De  Bry,  4  vols.,  folio,  Franco/.,  1519,  £51  95. 


A  Comparison  of  Prices  3 1 

This  'Collectio  Peregrinationum/  or  Grands 
Voyages  of  Theodore  de  Bry,  nearly  always 
makes  its  appearance  in  the  auction-room  in 
sections.  Nine  of  the  parts,  including  the 
Additamentum,  all  first  editions,  with  the  plates 
and  maps,  sold  on  July  i,  1895,  for  -£  18  zos. 

And  now  we  must  take  a  final  leave  of  the 
Duke  of  Roxburghe  and  the  collection  which  he 
got  together  during  the  course  of  a  long  life  of 
painstaking  and  critical  research.  His  catalogue 
is  worth  comparing  with  several  important  records 
of  the  present  day,  but  to  do  this  thoroughly 
would  involve  a  tabulated  analysis  quite  out  of 
keeping  with  a  work  such  as  I  am  engaged  upon. 
There  is  magic  in  comparisons,  for  they  tell  us 
what  to  avoid,  and  it  may  be  that  by  their  aid  we 
could  in  a  measure  take  fashion  by  the  forelock 
and  jump  the  years  to  come.  Such  a  consum- 
mation is  possible,  but  life  is  rounded  too  narrowly 
by  the  present,  and  therefore  too  short  to  make 
it  worth  anyone's  while  to  endeavour  to  peep  into- 
futurity. 


CHAPTER  III. 

SOME   LUCKY   FINDS. 

THE  book-hunter  whose  heart  is  in  his  quest 
never  tires  of  tales  of  lucky  discoveries, 
and  of  rare  books  bought  for  a  song. 
This  is  natural  enough,  and,  moreover,  authentic 
details  of  some  great  find  invariably  stimulate  his 
eagerness,  and  encourage  him  to  persevere  in  the 
search  for  what  he  is  repeatedly  being  told — as 
though  he  of  all  men  did  not  know  it  already — is 
only  to  be  met  with  casually,  and  by  the  merest 
of  accidents.  Now  that  all  of  us  have  settled 
among  ourselves  what  books  are  rare,  and  desirable 
to  possess  on  that  account,  as  well  as  for  many 
other  reasons,  everyone  is,  of  course,  naturally 
anxious  to  obtain  the  credit  and  still  more  the  solid 
advantages  of  a  startling  discovery.  It  is  each 
man  for  himself,  and  that  perhaps  is  the  reason 
why  book-men  of  the  old  school  invariably  dressed 
in  staid  and  sober  black,  like  Sisters  of  Charity, 
to  show  the  world  at  large  that  chanty  in  matters 
that  relate  to  their  pursuit  is  dead.  What  man 
among  the  whole  fraternity  would  give  away  his 


Some  Lucky  Finds  33 

suspicions  that,  in  such  and  such  a  place,  some- 
thing may  lie  hidden  ?  Rather  would  he  make 
his  way  to  the  spot,  in  fear  lest  some  other  explorer 
might  not,  after  all,  have  forestalled  him,  and 
during  his  journey  there  look  to  the  right  and 
the  left  of  him,  and  get  lost  in  crowds,  as  part  of 
a  deep  design  to  shake  off  any  other  bookworm 
who,  knowing  his  hunting  instincts  and  great 
experience,  might  perchance  be  shadowing  his 
footsteps.  It  has,  indeed,  been  seriously  ques- 
tioned more  than  once  by  learned  divines  whether 
any  collector,  and  more  especially  a  collector  of 
books,  can  by  any  possibility  reach  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  seeing  that  the  inestimable  gift  of 
charity  is  by  him  regarded  of  such  little  account 
that  he  would  do  anything  rather  than  practise  it. 
It  were  best,  however,  to  leave  such  polemical 
discussions  to  those  who  take  an  interest  in  them, 
and  content  ourselves  with  saying  that  the  book- 
man's ways  are  necessarily  tortuous,  and  his 
route  through  life  circuitous. 

It  is  next  to  impossible  to  open  any  book  about 
books  without  meeting  with  instances  of  lucky 
finds,  and  the  most  curious  part  of  the  matter  is 
that  the  stories  are  invariably  more  or  less  the 
same.  Like  the  literary  man's  collection  of  stock 
phrases,  which  he  uses  with  or  without  variation 
as  occasion  may  require,  and  at  judicious  intervals, 
so  these  records  of  the  chase  strike  us  as  being 
peculiarly  liable  to  recur.  From  their  opening 
sentences  we  know  them — nay,  the  very  mention 

3 


34     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

of  a  place  or  a  name  is  often  sufficient  to  make 
an  adept  take  up  his  parable  and  finish  the  narra- 
tion. Let  a  man  but  whisper  Hungerford  Market, 
and  we  know  that  he  is  going  to  tell  us  of  the 
fishmonger's  shop  where  about  half  a  century  ago 
'  autograph  signatures  of  Godolphin,  Sunderland, 
Ashley,  Lauderdale,  Ministers  of  James  II. ; 
Accounts  of  the  Exchequer  Office,  signed  by 
Henry  VII.  and  Henry  VIII. ;  Wardrobe  Accounts 
of  Queen  Anne  ;  Secret  Service  Accounts,  marked 
with  the  "  E.  G."  of  Nell  Gwynne  ;  a  treatise  on 
the  Eucharist,  in  the  boyish  hand  of  Edward  VI. ; 
and  a  disquisition  on  the  Order  of  the  Garter  in 
the  scholarly  writing  of  Elizabeth,'  were  rescued 
from  the  eaters  of  fried  plaice,  and  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  barbaric  tradesman  who  supplied 
them.  Mr.  Rogers  Rees,  of  '  Diversions  of  a 
Bookworm  '  fame,  got  this  story  from  somewhere, 
though  he  perhaps  would  not  know  it  now,  for  it 
has  been  altered  and  added  to  in  a  score  or  more 
of  competing  publications.  Then  there  are  stories 
of  Resbecque,  who  had  a  nose  for  a  book  second 
to  that  of  no  hound  for  a  fox,  of  Naude,  Colbert, 
the  great  Pixere"court,  and  many  more.  It  would 
be  a  shame  to  dish  up  these  plats  again,  for 
to  make  them  palatable  they  would  have  to 
be  seasoned  with  imaginative  details — an  ob- 
jectionable, not  to  say  fraudulent,  practice  at  its 
best. 

There  is  one  story,  however,  which   must  be 
raked  up,  and  then  decently  buried  again,  for  it  is 


Some  Lucky  Finds  35 

to  be  hoped  that  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  it.  It 
is  perhaps  not  so  well  known  as  many  of  the  rest, 
but  in  any  case  would  not  be  mentioned  here 
except  as  an  almost  unique  illustration  of  the 
vicissitudes  to  which  any  book,  however  scarce 
and  valuable  it  may  be,  is  occasionally  liable.  It 
is,  stripped  of  its  glosses,  to  the  following  effect : 
When  the  library  at  Thorneck  Hall  was  weeded 
of  its  superfluous  books,  the  butler,  who  superin- 
tended the  operation,  came  across  a  perfect  copy 
of  Dame  Juliana  Berners'  *  Boke  of  St.  Albans,' 
printed  by  an  unknown  typographer  in  1486. 
One  would  have  thought  that  the  quaintness  of 
the  type,  to  say  nothing  of  the  extraordinary 
character  of  the  coloured  coats  of  arms  and  other 
illustrations,  would  at  least  have  prompted  inquiry ; 
but  no !  it  was  thrown  lightly  aside,  and  in  due 
course  disposed  of  to  a  pedlar  for  ninepence.  He 
in  his  turn  sold  it  to  a  chemist  at  Gainsborough 
for  four  times  the  amount,  and  the  chemist  got 
£2  for  his  bargain  from  a  bookseller,  who,  notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  a  very  imperfect  copy  had 
been  disposed  of  at  the  Duke  of  Roxburghe's  sale 
many  years  before,  positively  sold  it  to  another 
bookseller  for  £7.  He,  at  any  rate,  was  some- 
what better  informed,  though  not  much,  for  once 
more  the  volume  changed  hands,  this  time  to  Sir 
Thomas  Grenville,  for  £80.  These  transactions 
did  not  take  place  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but  in  the 
forties  of  the  present  century,  and  the  wonder 
is  that  anyone  with  the  slightest  knowledge  of 

3—2 


36     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

books  could  have  flown  in  the  face  of  Dibdin's 
valuation  of  £420,  which  was  at  the  time  a  matter 
of  common  knowledge.  The  butler  may  be 
honestly  forgiven,  and  the  pedlar  commiserated 
with,  the  chemist  even  excused ;  but  the  two 
booksellers  have  no  hope  of  redemption.  The 
imperfect  Roxburghe  copy  brought  £147,  and  was 
resold  at  the  White  Knights  sale  for  £84.  In 
1882  a  perfect  copy  made  its  appearance  at 
Christie's,  and  was  knocked  down  for  £630,  being 
about  a  third  less  than  the  purchaser  had  made 
up  his  mind  to  pay  for  it  had  circumstances  com- 
pelled. The  life  of  a  book  is  more  often  than  not 
like  the  life  of  a  horse.  You  use  it,  and  little  by 
little  strip  it  of  its  value  till  it  becomes  a  wreck 
and  can  be  used  no  more.  The  '  Boke  of  St. 
Albans,'  in  company  with  many  other  treasured 
volumes,  is  not,  however,  for  use,  but  a  thing  of 
sentiment,  with  a  value  that  will  probably  continue 
to  increase,  till  the  leaves  crumble  before  the 
touch  of  time. 

Stories  such  as  this  are  the  book-man's  tonic  ; 
they  pick  him  up  from  the  despondency  into 
which  he  has  fallen  through  lack  of  sustenance, 
and  encourage  him  to  believe  that  extreme 
scarcity  is  not  always  the  reason  of  failure,  but 
rather  that  all  things  come  at  last  to  him  who 
can  work  and  can  wait,  as  indeed  they  do,  for 
instances  of  good  luck  in  the  matter  of  discovering 
books,  though  perhaps  not  numerous  when 
personal  experience  alone  is  considered,  are 


Some  Lucky  Finds  37 

common  enough  in  the   aggregate.      Here   is   a 
comparatively  recent  instance  of  good  fortune : 

In  the  summer  of  the  year  1893  a  London 
bookseller,  who  must  be  nameless,  was  offered  a 
small  library,  then  stored  in  a  provincial  town 
some  thirty  miles  away.  The  owner  copied  the 
title-pages  of  a  few  of  the  books,  and  these  were 
of  such  a  character  that  the  bookseller  went  over 
and  eventually  paid  the  price  asked.  What  that 
amount  was  I  am  unable  to  state,  but  have  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  it  was  less  than  £ 50.  The 
majority  of  the  volumes  were,  as  is  usually  the 
case  with  old-fashioned  and  not  particularly 
noticeable  libraries,  almost  worthless.  There 
were  sermons  preached  in  the  long-ago  to  sleep- 
ing congregations,  tracts  and  pamphlets  on 
nothing  in  particular,  an  old  and  well-thumbed 
Prayer-Book  or  two  of  no  importance,  and  the 
usual  ponderous  family  Bible  in  tarnished  gilt. 
On  a  casual  survey,  the  whole  of  the  books  might 
have  passed  muster  at  a  third-rate  auction,  and 
yet  the  bookseller  was  only  too  glad  to  see  them 
safely  housed  in  London.  The  reason  was  this : 
Among  the  refuse  were  Americana,  some  of 
extreme  rarity,  such  as  those  who  deal  in  such 
books  are  perpetually  on  the  look-out  for,  and 
rarely  find,  even  at  their  full  value.  As  these 
books  were  publicly  sold  the  following  December, 
we  are  in  a  position  to  see  what  the  bookseller  got 
in  return  for  his  money,  which,  as  I  have  said,  was 
probably  less  than  £50.  The  prices  realized  are 


38     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

given,  so  that  there  may  be  no  mistake  about  the 
matter  : 

1.  An    Act    for    Exportation    of    Commodities, 
Incourage    Manufactures,   Trade,   Plantations, 
four  sheets,  printed  on  one  side  only,  in  Black 
Letter,  1657,  8vo.     £i  los. 

2.  Hakluyt's     Principal     Navigations,    Voyages, 
Tramques,    and    Discoveries    of   the    English 
Nation,  3  vols.  in  2,  Black  Letter,  1599-1600, 
folio.     £6  55. 

3.  Josselyn's  Account  of  Two  Voyages  to  New 
England,  1674,  I2mo.     £6  155. 

4.  Gabriel's  Historical  and  Geographical  Account 
of  the  Province  and  Country  of  Pennsilvania, 
and  of  New  Jersey,  1698,  I2mo.     £31. 

5.  The  Book  of  the  General  Lawes  and  Liberties 
concerning    the   Inhabitants   of  Massachusets, 
1658.     Printed  according  to  the  order  of  the 
Court,  Cambridge  (Mass.),  1660,  small  folio.  £109. 

6.  Heath's  A  Journal  of  Travels  from  New  Hamp- 
shire to  Caratuck,  on  the  Continent  of  North 
America,  1706,  4to.     £5  155. 

7.  Frampton's  Joyfull   Newes   out   of  the   New- 
found Worlde,  1596,  4to.     £4  155. 

8.  Brereton's   Briefe   and   True    Relation  of  the 
Discoverie  of  the  North  Part  of  Virginia,  1602, 
4to.      £179.      This    copy   had    a    few    leaves 
mended. 

9.  Captain    John    Smith's    Description   of  New 
England,  1613,  410.     £5. 

10.  Mourt's  Relation  or  Journal  of  the  Beginning 


Some  Lucky  Finds  39 

and  Proceedings  of  the  English  Plantation 
Settled  at  Plimoth  in  New  England,  1622, 
4 to.  £40.  Title  and  corner  of  the  first  leaf 
mended. 

11.  A  Briefe  Relation  of  the  Discovery  and  Plan- 
tation of  New  England,  1622,  4to.     £40. 

12.  Captain     Thomas     James's     Strange     and 
Dangerous  Voyage  in  his  intended  Discovery 
of  the  North-West  Passage,  1633,  410.     £17. 

13.  A  Relation  of  Maryland,  together  with  a  Map 
of  the  Country.     These  Bookes  are  to  be  had 
at   Master  William   Deasley,    Esq.,  his   house 
on   the  back   side   of  Drury   Lane,  neere  the 
Cockpit    Playhouse;    or,    in    his    absense,    at 
Master  John  Morgan's  House  in  High  Holborne, 
over   against   the    Dolphin,    London,    Sept.  8, 
A.D.  1635.     £76.     This  copy  had  the  rare  map. 

14.  Captain    Luke   Fox.     North -West    Fox,   or 
Fox    from    the    North -West    Passage,    1635, 
4to.     £18. 

15.  Castell's  A  Short  Discoverie  of  the  Coast  and 
Continent  of  America,  1644,  4to.     £17. 

16.  Morton's  New  England's  Memorial,  printed 
at  Cambridge  (Mass.),  1669,  4to.     £47. 

17.  Lederer's      Discoveries     in     Three     Several 
Marches     from     Virginia     to     the     West     of 
Carolina,  1672,  4to.     £36. 

And  a  few  others,  realizing  a  grand  total  of  £658 
odd  for  twenty-four  works. 

This  remarkable  collection  of  books  of  American 
interest  is  probably  the  most  important  that  has 


40     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

ever  been  met  with  in  such  a  way.  It  may  have 
been  formed  a  couple  of  centuries  ago  by  someone 
who  took  a  burning  interest  in  the  '  New-found 
Worlde,'  as  old  Frampton  calls  America,  and  for 
various  reasons  was  unable  to  go  there.  Or  it 
may  be  that  it  was  got  together  at  a  later  date, 
as  the  presence  of  Heath's  '  Journal  of  Travels  ' 
seems  to  suggest,  by  some  bookish  prophet,  with 
an  eye  to  the  main  chance.  If  so,  it  is  a  pity  that  he 
did  not  live  long  enough  to  reap  the  reward  of  his 
foresight  and  energy,  though,  after  all,  even  had 
he  done  so,  cui  bono  ?  Suppose  he  gave  £5  for 
the  whole  collection  a  hundred  years  ago — and 
surely  this  is  on  the  right  side,  for  Hakluyt's 
'  Principal  Navigations '  would  itself  be  worth  as 
much  in  those  days — even  then  he  would  be  woe- 
fully out  of  pocket  for  his  pains,  for  his  £5  would, 
at  compound  interest,  have  increased  to  the  best 
part  of  £2,500.  It  is  this  little  matter  of  interest 
that  upsets  all  calculations,  and  makes  us  all  lying 
prophets,  so  far  as  money  is  concerned. 

Another  extremely  fortunate  find  was  made,  in 
1896,  in  Hampshire.  Can  such  things  be  ?  Can 
any  man  be  born  to  such  a  heritage  of  luck  ?  It 
seems  that  Mr.  M.  H.  Foster,  who  recently  bought 
the  Cams  Hall  estate  in  the  county  named,  took 
it  into  his  head  to  explore  the  mansion,  and  in 
doing  so  came  across  a  number  of  old  volumes 
which  had  been  abandoned  by  the  late  proprietor. 
They  lay,  dusty  and  cobwebbed,  in  an  old  cup- 
board, and  instead  of  consisting  of  forgotten 


Some  Lucky  Finds  41 

ledgers  and  day-books,  as  would  have  been  the 
case  if  any  less  fortunate  gentleman  had  been 
concerned,  proved  to  be  of  the  greatest  value. 
There  was  Caxton,  writ  large,  among  them — 
several  Caxtons  in  fact,  one  being  '  Justinian's 
Law,'  such  an  exceedingly  scarce  book  that  a 
later  edition  once  sold  in  London  for  £  1,000 — so 
at  least  it  is  said,  though  I  have  no  record  of  the 
circumstance.  At  any  rate,  there  is  very  little 
doubt  that  the  volume  in  question  would  bring 
that  amount  or  near  it,  and  again  let  it  be  asked, 
Can  any  mortal  living  enjoy  such  favour  from  the 
gods?  As  in  the  case  of  the  Thorneck  Hall 
*  Boke  of  St.  Albans,'  so  in  that  of  the  Cams  Hall 
'  Justinian's  Law  ' ;  how  can  such  books  be  over- 
looked ?  Their  very  type  betrays  them  suffi- 
ciently, one  would  think,  to  make  it  impossible 
for  anyone,  however  careless,  to  pass  them  by. 

Wholesale  and  very  valuable  discoveries  like 
these  are  naturally  of  such  infrequent  occurrence 
that  when  one  is  made  the  news  of  it  is  dissemi- 
nated far  and  wide,  and  commented  upon  in  all 
the  newspapers,  which  are  nothing  now  if  not 
literary,  at  least  to  some  extent.  Isolated  finds, 
the  picking  up  of  some  single  object  of  interest  or 
value,  is  the  most  the  book-man  reasonably  hopes 
for  in  these  days,  and  so  long  as  he  confines  his 
desires  within  such  narrow  bounds  it  is  hard 
indeed  if  he  never  reap  an  occasional  success, 
such  as  that  reported  of  a  Melbourne  gentleman, 
who  only  a  few  months  ago  picked  out  of  a  box 


42     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

labelled  '  Fourpence  each  '  a  first  edition  of  '  Sor- 
dello,'  with  an  inscription  in  the  handwriting  of 
the  author  himself.  Browning  had  written  on 
the  flyleaf,  'To  my  dear  friend,  R.  H.  Home, 
from  R.  B.,'  which,  though  certainly  autographi- 
cally  less  important  than  if  he  had  signed  his 
name  in  full,  is  yet  a  very  pretty  and  cheap 
souvenir  of  an  eminent  poet.  This  R.  H.  Home, 
who  was  himself  a  versifier,  and  once  celebrated 
as  the  author  of  '  Orion,'  emigrated  to  Australia 
in  1852,  and  became  a  Goldfields  Commissioner 
at  Ballarat.  When  he  left  there  and  came  to 
England  again,  the  book  must  have  been  left  to 
the  mercies  of  the  Melbourne  streets,  in  which 
presumably  it  existed  till  rescued  from  the  low 
depth  of  misery  which  the  miscellaneous  box  is 
supposed  to  imply. 

Amongst  a  lot  of  old  paper  recently  received  at 
a  mill  in  Andover,  Connecticut,  was  a  Bible 
which  some  Goth  had  sold  by  weight.  In  it  was 
an  inscription,  '  This  Bible  was  used  in  the  pulpit 
by  Rev.  Stephen  West,  pastor  in  Stockbridge, 
Mass.,  from  1759  to  1818.'  This  book  was 
perhaps  not  so  important  from  a  worldly  point  of 
view  as  '  The  Art  of  Cookery  made  Plain  and 
Easy ;  By  a  Lady,'  which  the  late  Mr.  Sala 
rescued  from  oblivion  in  the  Lambeth  Marshes,  as 
will  shortly  be  related  ;  but  the  Rev.  Stephen 
West  was  a  very  noted  personage  in  his  day,  and 
there  are  hundreds  of  people,  more  particularly  in 
America,  who  would  be  very  glad  to  possess  a 


Some  Lucky  Finds  43 

memorial  of  him.  He  was  the  author  of  the 
well-known  *  Essay  on  Moral  Agency,'  1794,  the 
'  Sketches  of  the  Life  of  the  Rev.  S.  Hopkins,' 
1805,  and  other  books  which  in  their  day  enjoyed 
a  very  extensive  circulation. 

Mr.  Sala's  discovery  of  Mrs.  Glasse's  cookery- 
book  was  due  to  his  habit  of  prowling  round  the 
old  bookstalls  of  the  Metropolis,  particularly  those 
which  line  the  narrow  streets  of  Lambeth  Marshes 
and  the  New  Cut.  On  a  Sunday  morning  these 
places  are  like  a  fair,  and,  literally,  scores  of  peri- 
patetic booksellers,  who  for  the  most  part  follow 
another  occupation  the  remaining  days  of  the 
week,  take  their  stand  with  barrows  piled  high 
with  lore.  The  mob  pull  the  volumes  about,  and 
haggle  over  the  prices,  so  that  the  stock  displayed 
is  not,  on  the  whole,  in  the  best  possible  con- 
dition. Still,  sometimes  you  do  meet  with  a 
well-preserved  rarity,  as  Mr.  Sala  did  when  he 
purchased  '  The  Art  of  Cookery  made  Plain  and 
Easy,'  1747,  thin  folio,  for  six  humble  pennies. 
He  had  the  book  bound  by  a  first-rate  craftsman, 
and  when  it  came  at  last  to  the  inevitable  hammer 
some  two  or  three  years  ago,  it  sold  for  £10,  and 
was  reasonably  worth  considerably  more.  Only 
five  or  six  copies  of  this  edition  are  known  to  be 
in  existence,  but  of  the  second  edition,  which  also 
appeared  in  1747,  only  one  copy  is  known,  accord- 
ing to  the  Rev.  Richard  Hooper,  whose  unique 
specimen  contains  an  inscription  worth  repro- 
ducing. It  runs  as  follows  : 


44     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

'  Steal  not  this  Book  my  honest  Frend  for  Fear 
the  Galowss  should  be  your  hend  and  when 
you  Die  the  Lord  will  say  and  wares  that  Book 
you  stole  away.' 

Cooks  are  proverbially  greasy  people,  and  a 
book  passing  through  their  hands  is  apt  to  return 
like  *  Tom  and  Jerry '  from  those  of  a  prize-fighter 
or  sporting  publican.  Still,  201  persons  sub- 
scribed to  the  first  edition  of  Mrs.  Glasse,  and 
282  to  the  second,  and  some  were  neither  cooks 
nor  publicans,  but  members  of  the  aristocracy, 
who  might  be  expected  to  treat  their  books  with 
some  show  of  respect.  But  perhaps  they  ex- 
pressly bought  them  for  the  use  of  their  cooks, 
and  handed  them  over  to  the  kitchen  authorities, 
in  which  case  their  rarity  is  accounted  for.  All 
old  cookery-books,  and  not  merely  Mrs.  Glasse's 
famous  work,  are  rare,  because  they  are  books  of 
practical  utility  meant  to  be  consulted  in  a 
republic  of  pots  and  pans,  and  grease  and  litter; 
but  Mrs.  Glasse's  guide  is  more  desirable  than 
most  other  English  books  of  the  kind,  because 
there  is  a  sentiment  hanging  around  it  like  a 
halo,  by  reason  of  words  which  are  not  to  be  found 
therein,  '  First  catch  your  hare.' 

For  my  part,  whenever  I  see  a  cookery-book 
flaunting  it  on  a  street  barrow,  I  rescue  it  at  once, 
for  I  have  a  belief,  rightly  or  wrongly,  that  some 
of  these  days  there  will  be  a  very  great  demand 
for  old  works  of  the  kind.  There  is  a  present 
disposition  to  return  to  ancestral  dishes,  which 


Some  Lucky  Finds  45 

means  the  resuscitation  of  'The  Skilful  Cook/ 
'  The  Good  Housewife's  Jewel,'  '  The  Queen's 
Closet  Opened/  '  The  Ladies'  Practice,'  and  many 
other  volumes  where  the  necessary  recipes  are  to 
be  found.  For  some  time  past,  indeed,  recipe- 
books  of  all  kinds  have  practically  disappeared 
from  the  stalls  where  once  they  were  so  numerous. 
'  They're  miking  a  lot  of  'em  hup  at  the  West 
Hend/  said  a  stall  proprietor,  jerking  his  thumb 
in  the  direction  of  Belgravia,  from  which  it  must 
be  understood,  not  that  any  manufactory  of 
forgeries  is  as  yet  established  there,  but  merely 
that  the  upper  ten  think  a  great  deal  of  old  recipe- 
books,  and  are  buying  them  up  for  their  cooks  to 
practise  with. 

It  is  sadly  to  be  feared  that  the  paper-mills 
grind  many  good  books  exceeding  small  at  times. 
This  is  to  be  conjectured  by  reason  of  the  fact 
that  every  now  and  then  a  consignment  is  stopped 
and  rescued  just  as  it  is  about  to  be  transformed 
into  pulp.  What  happens  once,  is,  we  may  be 
sure,  repeated  at  intervals,  though  direct  evidence 
may  be  wanting  to  convict  the  paper-maker. 
Evidence  of  this  character  is,  however,  occasion- 
ally forthcoming,  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of 
the  sixth  volume  of  Dr.  Vallancey's  '  Collectanea 
de  Rebus  Hibernicis/  which  was  published  in  two 
divisions  in  1804.  The  previous  five  volumes  are 
comparatively  common,  but  both  parts  of  volume 
six  are  very  scarce,  nearly  all  the  copies  having 
been  accidentally  sold  for  waste-paper,  and  treated 


46     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

as  such.  Charles  Dickens's  '  Village  Coquettes  ' 
and  also  Swinburne's  '  A  Song  of  Italy '  were 
once  much  rarer  books  than  they  are  now,  and 
commanded  a  great  deal  more  money  in  the 
market.  Neither  book  sold  well  when  published, 
and  a  very  considerable  '  remainder '  was  stacked 
in  quires  in  the  publishers'  cellars.  One  day  these 
Augean  stables  were  cleaned  out,  and  the  'Village 
Coquettes  '  and  *  A  Song  of  Italy '  were  saved 
from  the  mill  by  the  merest  of  accidents,  with  the 
result  that  the  former  book  went  down  fifty  per 
cent,  in  the  market,  and  the  latter  to  next  to 
nothing.  These  finds  were  noised  abroad,  with 
the  result  that  they  were  robbed  of  most  of  their 
importance.  Imagine,  if  we  can,  a  great  dis- 
covery of  a  hundred  copies  of  Shakespeare's  first 
folio.  And  imagine  also  a  journal  of  credit 
getting  hold  of  the  news  and  noising  it  abroad,  as 
it  would  do  when  it  had  satisfied  itself  that  there 
was  at  least  a  substratum  of  truth  in  the  story. 
The  result  we  know.  Half  the  value  of  the  find 
would  vanish  away  on  the  instant,  and  rightly 
so,  too,  as  a  strict  -moralist  would  doubtless 
insist. 

Sometimes,  though  not  often,  some  of  the 
literary  auctioneers  will  make  a  mistake,  and  in 
the  most  unaccountable  manner  include  a  rarity 
in  a  '  parcel '  of  rubbish.  A  good  copy  of  the 
first  edition  of  Cocker's  '  Decimal  Arithmetic,' 
1685,  was  picked  up  in  this  way  a  short  time 
ago,  though  not  in  London,  and  at  Leeds  a 


Some  Lucky  Finds  47 

dealer  bought  an  original  and  very  interesting 
letter  in  Shelley's  autograph,  which  had  some- 
how or  other  slipped  among  a  number  of  school- 
books  of  trifling  value.  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in 
the  world  to  make  a  mistake  where  books  are 
concerned,  more  particularly  when  they  consist 
of  pamphlets  and  other  works  which  lie  in  a 
small  compass.  Folios  can  take  care  of  them- 
selves, but  a  man  needs  to  have  a  first-rate  all- 
round  knowledge  who  would  essay  to  catalogue 
a  good  old-fashioned  miscellaneous  library. 

In  France,  sale-catalogues  are  prepared  by  ex- 
perts, who  are  called  in  to  assist  the  auctioneers ; 
in  London  the  auctioneers  keep  their  own  cata- 
loguers, and  in  the  country  towns  they  seek  the 
assistance  of  booksellers,  or  do  the  work  them- 
selves. If  a  sale  is  advertised  to  be  held  at  a 
house  where  furniture  is  the  chief  attraction,  the 
presence  of  a  comparatively  small  number  of 
books  acts  like  a  magnet,  and  people  are  at- 
tracted from  far  and  near  in  the  hope  that  some- 
thing good  will  fall  to  their  share.  Sometimes 
they  are  rewarded,  more  frequently  not ;  for  what 
everybody  is  looking  for  is  almost  sure  to  be  de- 
tected by  several,  if  it  exist  at  all,  and  then,  of 
course,  the  price  is  run  up.  Still,  occasionally, 
a  whole  roomful  of  experts  will  miss  a  bar- 
gain which  stares  them  in  the  face.  Unac- 
countable as  it  may  seem,  I  myself  once  bought 
for  £ i  a  first-rate  copy  of  Alken's  '  National  Sports 
of  Great  Britain,'  1821,  a  scarce  folio  book  full  of 


48     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

coloured  plates.  It  was  wedged  in  among  a 
quantity  of  furniture,  and  had  escaped  observa- 
tion, although  there  were  several  booksellers  in 
the  room. 

The  highest  form  of  genius  to  be  met  with  in 
book-men  is,  however,  the  capacity  possessed  by 
a  very  few  of  them  to  detect  the  author  of  an 
anonymous  book  by  reference  to  the  style  in 
which  it  is  written.  If  we  happened  to  meet 
with  *  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant '  for  a  trifling  sum, 
and  passed  it  by,  we  should  deserve  our  fate,  for 
the  authorship  is  so  generally  and  widely  known 
that  there  is  no  excuse  for  any  book-man  who 
is  unacquainted  with  the  facts  surrounding  it. 
But  were  we  to  discover  another  poem  by  Shelley, 
which  no  one  had  ever  heard  of  before,  and  also 
be  able  to  prove  conclusively  that  he  must,  ex 
necessitate,  have  been  the  author  of  it,  that  indeed 
would  be  a  triumph  of  skill.  Some  few  books 
have  been  rescued  in  this  way,  ( Alaric  at  Rome,' 
for  instance,  which  was  discovered  and  assigned 
to  Matthew  Arnold  simply  and  solely  by  reference 
to  the  style.  '  Alaric  at  Rome  '  made  a  sensation 
when  the  authorship  came  to  be  known,  and  book- 
hunters  were  searching  high  and  low,  and  giving 
commissions  in  hot  haste.  A  few  copies  were  un- 
earthed in  this  way,  but  the  number  was  exceed- 
ingly small,  not  more  than  two  or  three,  I  believe, 
and  the  pamphlet,  for  it  is  nothing  more,  is  at 
this  moment  an  object  of  deep  interest  to  the 
few,  who  are  in  reality  very  many,  when  we  come 


Some  Lucky  Finds  49 

to  reflect  that  none  but  perhaps  half  a  dozen  can 
ever  hope  to  possess  it. 

When  we  get  into  bookland,  more  particularly 
into  that  secluded  corner  of  it  where  specialists 
assemble  to  compare  notes  and  exhibit  their 
treasures,  confusion  springs  up  on  the  instant. 
The  specialist  cannot  always  know  his  business 
thoroughly.  If  you  mention  a  particular  book 
which  comes  within  his  purview,  he  will  probably 
tell  you  how  many  copies  of  it  are  known  to  exist, 
and  where  they  are,  how  many  of  the  total  number 
are  cropped,  and  to  what  extent,  and  whether  the 
titles  have  been  '  washed  '  or  otherwise  renovated. 
He  knows  accurately  the  original  cost  in  money 
of  each,  and  how  much  each  would  be  likely  to 
sell  for  in  case  it  were  brought  to  the  hammer. 
All  this  is,  of  course,  good  and  solid  information, 
but  it  is  too  microscopically  minute  and  exact  to 
interest  anyone  outside  a  very  small  circle.  To 
most  of  us  these  details  are  unimportant,  and 
yet  every  lucky  find  must  pass  some  specialist,  who 
assigns  to  it  its  proper  position  in  point  of  excel- 
lence, and  makes  it  keep  its  place.  For  this 
reason  I  have  been  charged  with  the  offence  of 
speaking  about  him  as  though  he  were  a  common 
bookworm,  ready  to  feed  on  anything  that  came 
in  his  way,  which  is,  of  course,  flat  treason,  not 
by  any  means  to  be  silently  borne  by  the  elite. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   FORGOTTEN    LORE   SOCIETY. 

COMMON-SENSE  tells  us  that  < finds,'  as 
they  are  popularly  called,  must  necessarily 
be  made  by  the  purest  of  accidents. 
Valuables  of  any  kind,  though  frequently  lost  or 
mislaid,  seldom  remain  unappropriated  for  long, 
and  to  search  for  them  with  intent  is  to  be  too 
late  in  such  a  large  preponderance  of  cases  that 
it  is  not  worth  while  to  go  to  the  trouble  of  doing 
so.  A  '  find,'  as  I  take  the  word  to  mean  in  a 
popular  sense,  is  the  discovery  of  something  of 
special  interest  or  value,  followed  by  its  acquisition 
at  a  price  which  is,  at  market  rates,  very  much 
less  than  it  is  worth.  The  price  paid  is  the  gist 
of  the  find  in  the  popular  eye,  though  there  is  no 
denying  that,  in  the  case  of  genuine  literature, 
this  is  about  the  most  unsatisfactory  view  that 
can  be  taken  of  the  matter. 

If  an  extremely  scarce  or  interesting  book,  for 
which  one  has,  perhaps,  been  searching  for  years, 
is  at  last  acquired  at  any  price  whatever,  the 
'  find '  is  none  the  less  real,  merely  because  the 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         5 1 

cost  is  great,  though  we  should  have  hard  work 
to  convince  the  ordinary  book-buyer  that  this  is 
so.  He  is  of  opinion  that  money  can  buy  any- 
thing, books  not  excepted,  and  in  that  he  is 
assuredly  wrong,  for  there  are  many  books  which 
are  not  to  be  procured  at  any  price,  simply 
because  they  have  disappeared  as  though  they 
had  never  been.  We  know  they  once  lived, 
because  they  are  referred  to  by  name  in  contem- 
porary reviews,  or  have  perhaps  been  reprinted  ; 
but  now  they  are  as  dead  as  the  '  Original  Poetry ' 
of  Victor  and  Cazire,  which  can  be  traced  to  the 
pages  of  the  Morning  Chronicle  of  September  18, 
1810,  and  to  a  couple  of  reviews  of  the  day,  but 
of  which  no  copy  is  now  known. 

It  was  this  '  Original  Poetry '  that  first  suggested 
the  idea  of  a  society  to  promote  the  systematic 
search  for  '  rare  and  curious  volumes  of  forgotten 
lore,'  as  Edgar  Poe  felicitously  has  it.  These 
poems  were  the  production  of  Shelley  and  a  friend 
— probably  his  cousin,  Harriet  Grove — but  had 
hardly  been  published  a  week  when  Stockdale, 
the  publisher,  inspecting  the  book  with  more 
attention  than  he  previously  had  leisure  to  bestow, 
recognised  one  of  the  pieces  as  having  been  taken 
bodily  from  'The  Monk.'  Shelley  then  suppressed 
the  entire  edition  in  disgust,  but  not  before  nearly 
a  hundred  copies  had  been  put  into  circulation. 
The  question  is,  Where  are  these  derelicts  now  ? 
It  is  incomprehensible  that  all  can  have  been 
consigned  to  the  flames  or  torn  to  pulp. 

4—2 


52     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

Most  probably  one  at  least  has  survived  the  wrack 
of  time  and  neglect,  and  may  be  lying  perdu  in  the 
garret  or  rubbish-heap  of  some  old  farmhouse, 
in  which  Shelley  is  but  little  known,  and  '  Victor ' 
and  '  Cazire '  absolute  strangers  both.  And  if 
this  particular  book,  why  not  many  others,  which, 
though  not  absolutely  lost,  are  yet  so  very  rarely 
met  with  that  it  is  the  ambition  of  every  book- 
hunter,  great  or  small,  to  track  them  down  ? 

As  the  world  is  not  inhabited  entirely  by  specia- 
lists, the  inference  is  that  books  of  all  kinds,  good 
as  well  as  indifferent,  lie  hidden  away  in  obscure 
places,  waiting  the  coming  of  some  appreciative 
explorer  who  will  rescue  them  from  the  neglect  of 
many  years,  and  restore  them  to  the  world  from 
whence  they  came.  It  is  no  use  advertising  in  these 
cases.  Every  week,  year  in  and  year  out,  stereo- 
typed advertisements  appear  in  all  sorts  of  likely 
and  unlikely  journals,  and  nothing  ever  seems  to 
come  of  them.  They  are  read,  doubtless,  by  the 
very  people  whose  goods  and  chattels  stand  in 
need  of  a  thorough  overhauling ;  but  they  do  not 
know  the  real  extent  of  their  possessions,  and 
usually  have  a  fine  contempt  for  articles  of  small 
bulk — a  by  no  means  unusual  circumstance,  be  it 
said,  even  in  educated  circles,  for  it  is  on  record 
that,  when  Sion  College  was  burned  down,  many 
priceless  volumes  in  the  library  were  destroyed 
simply  because  the  attendants,  at  the  risk  of  their 
lives,  devoted  all  the  time  available  to  the  rescue 
of  folios. 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         53 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  Prynne's  miscella- 
neous writings  were  for  the  most  part  saved, 
while  other  treatises,  of  far  more  importance,  but 
smaller  in  size,  were  licked  up  by  the  flames,  and 
so  perished.  The  natural  instinct  of  human  beings 
is  to  place  confidence  in  weight,  and  to  ascribe 
wisdom  to  bulk.  For  centuries  this  idea  pre- 
vailed throughout  Europe,  and  doubtless  prompted 
Nicolai  de  Lyra  to  write  those  hundreds  of  folios 
of  commentary  on  the  New  Testament  which 
at  one  time  were  the  mournful  heritage  of  thou- 
sands. So  also  the  great  Baxter  reaped  much 
renown  by  reason  of  his  seventy  folios  or  quartos, 
causing  Bayle  to  remark,  '  Perhaps  no  copying 
clerk  who  ever  lived  to  grow  old  amidst  the  dust 
of  an  office  ever  transcribed  so  much  as  this 
author  has  written.' 

The  real  book-hunter  of  to-day  is,  however, 
fortunately  free  of  the  ancient  superstition,  and 
knows  very  well  that  as  a  general  rule  the  scarcest 
printed  books  are  those  which  are  small  in  size.  To 
the  people  at  large  this  is  not  so,  and  thus  it  is  that 
pamphlets  of  extreme  rarity,  small  volumes  which 
you  can  hold  in  your  hand  with  ease,  or  carry  in 
an  inner  pocket  with  comfort,  are  neglected  and 
eventually  forgotten,  and  doubtless  destroyed  in 
sheer  ignorance,  more  often  than  we  care  to  think 
of.  It  was  with  the  object  of  rescuing  some  of 
these  that  the  Forgotten  Lore  Society  first  saw 
the  light  seven  years  ago.  This,  indeed,  was  not 
its  real  name,  but  the  title  is  a  good  one,  and  as 


54     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

descriptive  of  the  objects  sought  to  be  attained 
as  any  other  that  could  be  invented.  The  idea 
was  to  search  the  country  for  neglected  books  in 
the  hope  that  something  at  least  might  be  dis- 
covered among  the  heaps  of  ancestral  rubbish 
that  time  and  the  elements  are  fast  bringing  to 
decay. 

Now,  I  venture  to  state  that  the  more  anyone 
of  impartial  judgment  considers  facts  and  prob- 
abilities, the  more  he  must  be  satisfied  that  this 
was  no  Quixotic  scheme.  In  some  instances  it  is 
plain  that  even  the  most  protracted  and  thorough 
search  would  be  mere  waste  of  time,  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  case  of  Byron's  '  Fugitive  Pieces,' 
1806,  which  is  known  to  have  been  entirely  de- 
stroyed, with  the  exception  of  three  copies,  all  of 
which  can  be  accounted  for.  But,  then,  the  opera- 
tions of  the  society  were  not  confined  to  odd 
volumes,  but  to  rarities  of  any  kind  and  in  any 
number  that  Providence  might  see  fit  to  throw  in 
its  way.  If  not  Byron,  then  Shelley,  or  Burns, 
or  those  older  authors  whose  very  names  are 
synonyms  for  extreme  scarcity,  such,  for  example, 
as  Brereton,  Whitbourne,  W.  Hamond,  Bullinger, 
and  the  scores  who  have  written  seventeenth- 
century  poems  and  composed  old  music  to  sing 
them  to.  Have  all  practically  vanished,  or  are 
they  merely  under  the  lock  of  a  combination  of 
indifference  and  ignorance  for  a  time  ?  That  was 
the  question. 

With    this    society   I    was   connected    as   an 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         55 

ordinary  member,  and  allotted  a  certain  acreage 
over  which  to  roam,  on  the  distinct  understanding 
that  any  advantage  was  to  accrue  to  the  benefit 
of  the  members  as  a  whole.  Elaborate  rules  were 
drawn  up,  and  every  imaginable  contingency  fully 
provided  for.  There  was  no  lack  of  money,  and 
no  want  of  enterprise  or  enthusiasm ;  yet  the  pro- 
ject failed  for  the  simplest  of  all  reasons  —  but 
one  which  had  apparently  never  entered  into  the 
calculations  of  the  promoters.  Spread  over  Eng- 
land, and  some  parts  of  Scotland  and  Ireland, 
were  over  a  hundred  book-men,  all  of  them 
thoroughly  well  versed  in  literature  of  a  certain 
kind,  but,  with  few  exceptions,  rigorous  specialists, 
who  affected  particular  authors  or  subjects,  and 
knew  little  outside  the  restricted  circle  they  had 
made  their  own.  Let  any  one  of  these  be  drawn 
within  the  vortex  of  his  favourite  branch  of  study, 
and  I  am  sure  that  he  would  have  acquitted 
himself  admirably;  but  what  was  wanted  in  a 
matter  of  this  kind  was  a  general  and  extensive 
acquaintance  with  the  market,  and  not  a  know- 
ledge, however  deep  or  profound,  of  the  lives  of 
authors  long  since  dead,  and  of  what  they  wrote, 
and  the  circumstances  that  attended  the  publi- 
cation of  their  works.  This,  unfortunately,  was 
the  information  with  which  most  of  the  members 
set  out  to  search  the  countryside,  and  the  mis- 
takes they  made  would  be  sufficient  to  excite  the 
laughter  of  even  the  tyro  were  they  but  published. 
A  perfect  Iliad  of  woes  tracked  the  footsteps  of  each 


56     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

member  of  this  society  wherever  he  went,  and  it  is 
not  at  all  surprising  that  it  eventually  languished 
and  was  finally  dissolved.  A  few  of  these  mis- 
takes may,  however,  be  set  down  with  the  object 
of  showing  how  easy  it  is  to  tumble  into  error, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  be  perfectly  satisfied  that 
the  mistake,  if  any,  is  on  the  wrong  shoulders. 

Every  collector  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  works  knows 
that  on  December  14, 1864,  he  delivered  a  lecture 
at  the  Town  Hall,  Manchester,  and  that  this 
lecture  was  printed  and  published  in  that  city,  in 
pamphlet  form,  under  the  title  of  '  The  Queens' 
Gardens.'  He  is  also  aware  that  only  three 
copies  of  the  pamphlet  are  known  to  exist,  and  if 
he  is  very  well  informed  indeed  he  will  know  who 
has  them,  and  where  they  got  them  from,  and  at 
what  price.  A  portion  of  this  information  was  in 
the  possession  of  a  member  at  Bath,  who,  as  he 
said,  had  accidentally  discovered  a  copy  of  the 
*  book  '  in  a  parcel  of  odds  and  ends  that  was  to 
be  sold  by  auction  the  following  day.  In  his 
letter  he  requested  a  reply  by  telegram  first  thing 
in  the  morning  saying  to  what  price  he  was  to  go, 
as  he  had  reason  to  believe  that  other  persons 
beside  himself  were  aware  of  the  circumstance. 
There  was  no  time  for  explanations,  so  the  wire 
was  sent,  though  the  word  '  book '  came  with  a 
very  suspicious  ring.  It  was  as  well  perhaps  that 
the  limit  was  intentionally  put  low,  or  there  is  no 
telling  to  what  absurd  price  the  parcel  of  mis- 
cellanea might  not  have  been  forced  by  his  eager- 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         57 

ness.  As  it  was,  it  was  bought  for  £2  ios.,  or 
about  six  or  seven  times  as  much  as  it  was  worth, 
for  '  The  Queens'  Gardens  '  was  not  the  coveted 
pamphlet  at  all,  but  the  book  known  as  *  Sesame 
and  Lilies '  (and  not  even  the  first  edition  of  that), 
published  by  Smith,  Elder  and  Co.  in  1865,  which 
contains  the  reprints  of  the  two  lectures  (i)  '  Of 
Kings'  Treasuries,'  (2)  '  Of  Queens'  Gardens.' 
It  was  evident  that  this  sort  of  thing  had 
only  to  become  general  and  the  society  would 
be  ruined,  for  all  payments  came  from  the 
common  fund.  When  the  error  was  pointed  out, 
the  member  cavilled  and  argued,  but  could  not  be 
convinced.  He  was  certain  that  he  had  bought 
the  true  and  original  '  Queens'  Gardens,'  and 
darkly  hinted  at  secession. 

On  another  occasion  a  member  bought 
'  Friendship's  Offering/  for  1840,  merely  because 
it  contains  '  The  Scythian  Guest.'  He,  too,  could 
not  be  persuaded  that  the  error  was  his  rather 
than  that  of  the  bookseller  who  sold  it  him. 
Times  without  number  one  edition  was  mistaken 
for  another  ;  over  and  over  again  were  imperfect 
or  tattered  volumes  bought  at  prices  that  would 
have  been  impossible  but  for  the  London  treasury 
of  this  secret  society.  *  No  good  comes,'  says  old 
John  Hill  Burton,  '  no  good  comes  of  gentlemen 
buying  and  selling ' — a  dictum  which  was  mani- 
festly applicable  here.  Had  the  confident  pur- 
chaser of  'Queens'  Gardens'  been  confronted  with 
Nichols's  '  Herald  and  Genealogist,'  he  would  have 


58     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

been  in  his  element,  for  he  was  an  adept  in  the  lore 
of  armorials  and  pedigrees,  and  had  a  fine  collection 
of  volumes  of  that  kind.  Outside  these  subjects 
he  knew  but  little,  which  for  all  practical  purposes 
is  infinitely  worse  than  knowing  nothing  at  all. 

Another  grievous  error  resulted  in  the  pur- 
chase of  Shakespeare's  '  Venus  and  Adonis,'  'The 
Rape  of  Lucrece,'  '  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,'  and 
'  Sonnets  to  Sundry  Notes  of  Musick,'  at  a  good 
round  sum.  The  pieces  were  bound  up  together 
in  dilapidated  calf,  and  as  each  had  a  separate 
pagination  there  may  have  been  just  a  shadow  of 
excuse  for  the  payment  of  £2,  which  was  the 
price  demanded.  But  this  book  was  merely 
Lintott's  first  collected  edition,  a  work  which 
might  have  been  manufactured  expressly  for  the 
behoof  of  innocent  purchasers,  so  antiquated  and 
primitive  does  it  look.  Had  it  been  Cote's  col- 
lected edition  of  1640,  instead  of  Lintott's  com- 
paratively worthless,  and  certainly  very  careless, 
production,  which  he  took  good  care  not  to  date, 
all  would  have  been  well ;  but  this  was  never  at 
any  time  likely  to  be  the  case,  for  the  price  was 
dead  against  a  supposition  of  the  kind.  Price 
is,  indeed,  often  a  most  valuable  guide  to  the 
real  worth  of  a  book ;  though  this  is  not  always 
the  case,  as  the  following  anecdote  of  a  circum- 
stance that  happened  to  myself  abundantly 
proves.  I  took  the  greatest  pains  to  trace  every 
step  in  the  history  I  am  about  to  unfold,  and 
know  that  the  details  are  true. 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society          59 

It  is  the  custom  of  many  booksellers  to  send 
out  their  catalogues  in  alphabetical  order,  and  had 
only  my  name  been  Abbot,  or  even  Abrahams,  this 
account  of  an  accident  which  can  hardly  fade 
from  my  memory  would  probably  have  never  been 
written.  The  Forgotten  Lore  Society  would 
have  reaped  most  of  the  benefit  certainly,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  should  have  been  rich  in  the 
consciousness  of  having  obtained  for  a  mere  trifle 
one  of  the  finest  known  copies  of  an  extremely  rare 
piece,  and  one  of  the  few  of  any  quality  that  have 
ever  come  into  the  market  at  any  price. 

The  society  had  not  been  in  working  order  a 
month,  when  one  of  those  extraordinary  strokes  of 
luck  which  often  fall  to  the  share  of  the  gambler 
at  the  commencement  of  his  career,  and  as 
certainly  desert  him  at  the  end  of  it,  happened  to 
me.  It  was  brought  late  one  evening  by  a  book- 
seller's catalogue  which  I,  being  much  occupied 
at  the  time,  threw  aside  till  a  more  convenient 
season.  They  say  that  strange  psychological 
influences  often  work  out  the  destiny  of  men, 
although  they  know  it  not,  and  some  such 
influence  must  have  been  haunting  me  then,  for 
contrary  to  all  custom,  and  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  to  catch  the  last  post  was  a  matter  of 
imperative  necessity,  I  found  that  the  catalogue 
had  an  altogether  exceptional  if  not  unique  attrac- 
tion. Do  what  I  might,  I  could  not  forget  its 
existence,  nor  could  I  make  satisfactory  progress 
with  the  work  which  had,  whether  I  liked  it  or 


60     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

not,  to  be  finished  and  out  of  the  house  half  an 
hour  before  midnight  at  the  latest.  So  the  cata- 
logue was  opened,  curiously  enough,  at  a  place 
at  which  there  was  no  reason  it  should  open,  for 
after  a  while  I  lost  it  and  had  some  difficulty  in 
finding  it  again.  It  had  opened,  however,  at 
page  8,  and  the  first  entry  that  caught  my  eye  was 
this,  word  for  word  exactly  : 


114.     Hornem    (Horace)    The    Waltz:    an    Apostrophic 
Hymn.     By  Horace  Hornem,  Esq.  :    4to.,   1813,  unbound. 
5.  6d. 


Now,  there  are,  of  course,  two  early  editions  of 
'  The  Waltz,'  one  the  quarto  above-named,  and 
the  other  an  octavo  published  in  1821,  and  it  was 
quite  likely,  and  indeed  more  than  probable,  that 
the  bookseller,  with  his  mind's  eye  fixed  on  the 
excessively  scarce  issue  of  1813,  might  have 
unconsciously  written  it  down  instead  of  the  com- 
paratively common  octavo.  Another  hypothesis 
suggested  itself,  namely,  that  the  entry  was 
designed  to  bring  customers  to  his  place  of 
business,  and  that  '  The  Waltz  '  of  1813  had  no 
existence  there  in  fact.  Such  devices  for  making 
trade  are  not  unknown,  and  this  might  very  well 
be  one  of  them.  Nevertheless,  I  determined  to 
test  the  matter,  and  though  the  laugh  is  greatly 
to  my  discomfort  even  at  this  distance  of  time,  I 
do  not  mind  admitting  that  I  was,  metaphorically 
speaking,  glued  to  the  doorstep  long  before  the 
shop  opened  in  the  morning.  To  sit  there  in 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         61 

reality  I  could  not  for  shame,  so  I  walked  about 
Oxford  Street  within  bowshot,  ready  to  besiege 
the  door  in  case  any  other  snapper-up  of  uncon- 
sidered  trifles  should  show  an  anxiety  to  forestall 
his  brethren  of  the  chase.  Even  when  the  shop 
opened,  I  did  not  walk  in  immediately,  nor  when 
there  did  I  brutally  ask  point-blank  for  the  coveted 
treasure.  An  uneasy  conscience  pointed  out  that, 
if  there  were  anything  in  the  matter,  too  great 
an  anxiety  might  give  rise  to  suspicion,  and 
'  The  Waltz '  would  in  that  case  be  difficult  to 
find.  I  bought  another  book,  which  I  did  not 
want,  and  not  till  then  suggested  number  114. 

*  Gone,'  said  the  clerk,  looking  at  his  copy  of 
the  catalogue. 

'Gone?'  said  I. 

'  Yes,'  he  replied,  '  sold  yesterday.' 

I  thought  at  the  time  that  a  trace  of  a  smile 
played  about  the  corners  of  his  mouth  as  he  said 
this,  and  I  should  not  wonder  if  that  were  so,  for 
the  bookseller  afterwards  told  me  that  his  place 
had  been  besieged  for  many  days  by  hungry  book- 
worms, who  had  sauntered  in  one  after  the  other 
in  the  most  careless  manner  imaginable,  and  asked 
for  this  very  '  Waltz.'  '  They  positively  danced 
on  the  pavement,'  he  said,  'when  they  found  it 
had  gone,'  and  with  this  small  joke  he  was  fain  to 
mollify  himself,  for  it  was  the  literal  truth  that  in 
an  evil  moment  he  had  sold  a  pearl  of  great 
price  for  the  beggarly  sum  of  33.  6d.  He  did  not 
know  to  whom ;  he  had  never  seen  the  man 


62     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

before,  and  '  in  all  probability,'  he  added  with  a 
sigh,  '  I  shall  never  see  him  again.' 

The  subsequent  history  of  one  of  the  finest,  if 
not  the  finest,  copies  of  Byron's  quarto  *  Waltz  ' 
in  existence  is  as  follows :  The  original  purchaser 
sold  it  to  a  dabbler  in  books  for  ios.,  and  he 
in  his  turn  disposed  of  it  for  £4  to  a  man  who, 
though  not  a  bookseller,  occasionally  acted  as 
such,  and  was  thoroughly  conversant  with  every 
move  of  the  market.  He  had  no  difficulty  in 
selling  it  by  telegram,  and  the  price  paid — £60 — 
was  not,  under  the  circumstances,  in  the  least  too 
high,  for  the  copy  was  as  fresh  and  clean  as  when 
it  left  the  publishing  offices  of  Sherwood,  Neely, 
and  Jones  more  than  eighty  years  ago,  and  had 
not  been  tampered  with  in  any  way. 

The  suggestion  that  the  price  demanded  for  a 
book  is  often  a  test  of  its  real  worth  is  both  proved 
and  avoided  by  this  story.  As  I  did  not,  as  it 
happened,  secure  the  '  Waltz,'  I  feel  sorry  for  the 
bookseller,  and  would  point  out  to  him  that  it  is 
impossible  for  anyone,  bookseller  or  not,  to  be 
acquainted  with  every  volume  and  pamphlet  that 
has  ever  been  published.  He  made  a  mistake  of 
such  grave  consequences  to  himself  that  he  is  not 
at  all  likely  to  make  another  of  the  same  kind.  His 
sin  merely  consisted  in  either  not  knowing  who 
'  Horace  Hornem,  Esq.,'  really  was,  or  more 
probably  in  momentarily  and  yet  irrevocably  con- 
fusing that  pseudonym  with  some  other  which  he 
may  have  had  in  his  mind  at  the  time.  This  is  a 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         63 

very  common  source  of  error,  and  very  probably 
accounts  for  the  incident.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  action  of  the  intermediate  holder  in  selling  the 
book  for  £4  is  inexplicable  and  inexcusable.  Had 
he  said  IDS.  6d.,  and  thus  made  6d.  on  the  transac- 
tion, he  would  have  had  the  excuse  of  absolute 
ignorance  in  his  favour,  but  £4  is  such  a  curious 
and  yet  significant  amount  that  there  can  be  no 
question  that  he  at  any  rate  knew  sufficiently  well 
what  he  was  about  to  make  the  absence  of  proper 
inquiry  on  his  part  a  positive  crime.  Any  such 
value  as  £"4  placed  on  a  pamphlet  of  twenty-seven 
pages  is  in  itself  such  an  indication  of  value  that 
no  anxious  would-be  purchaser  of  any  scarce  and 
yet  insignificant-looking  book  dare  offer  anything 
like  the  amount  for  it.  He  must  either  pay  the 
full  price  or  near  it,  which  is  more  honest,  as  well 
as  more  satisfactory  in  the  long-run,  or  swallow 
his  principles  and  tender  next  to  nothing  with  a 
nonchalant  air. 

Personally  I  feel  sorry  that  the  Forgotten  Lore 
Society  had  such  a  small  measure  of  success,  for 
it  deserved  well.  The  management  was  too 
vicarious  for  the  times,  and,  moreover,  its  object 
was  not  the  buying  and  selling  of  books,  which 
one  man,  if  he  have  sufficient  capital,  can  do  as 
well  as  twenty.  To  rescue  mean-looking  but 
valuable  literature  from  almost  certain  destruction 
was  its  one  and  only  study,  and  the  realization  of 
its  dreams  was  only  accomplished  very  partially, 
because,  as  I  have  hinted,  the  members  of  the 


64     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

association  were    specialists    moving   in    narrow 
grooves.   The  few  successes  that  can  be  placed  to 
its   credit  would,  however,   have  been  its  curse 
had  it   dealt   hardly  and  uncharitably  with  the 
ignorant  people  who  on  more  than  one  occasion 
parted  with  small  fortunes  (to  them)  for  the  price 
of  a  day's  subsistence.     To  buy  a  perfectly  clean 
copy  of  Thackeray's  'Second  Funeral  of  Napo- 
leon' for   2s.   was    a   work  of  art,    for  the  old 
woman  who  sold  it,  in   order  to  buy  tea,   as  it 
subsequently  transpired,   wanted   more,  and   yet 
was  so  thoroughly  saturated  with  suspicion  that 
she  would  probably  have  refused  to  sell  at  any 
price   had   more   been   offered.     The  book  was 
acquired  for  that  sum,  as  I  have  said,  after  much 
discussion  and  with  many  misgivings,  at  least  on 
one  side ;  but  when   bought,   the  circumstances 
altered,  and  she  found  herself  possessed  of  more 
money  than  she  had  had  the  control  of  at  one 
time  in  her  life  before,  for  it  is,  I  think,  to  the 
credit  of  the    Forgotten    Lore  Society   that    it 
voluntarily   paid    into    the   Post-Office    Savings 
Bank    a    sum    of    £10    to    the    order    of    the 
seller    a    few    days    after    the    transaction    was 
carried  through.     Such  finds  as  these  were,  how- 
ever, few  and  far  between.     In  nearly  every  case 
such  books  as  the  ignorant  are  possessed  of  are 
very  inferior,  and,  what  is  perhaps  not  surprising, 
assessed  by  their  owners  at  ridiculous  prices. 

It  was  part  of  the  business  of  the  society  to 
advertise  for  books  in  country  journals,  and  to 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society          65 

while  away  a  few  moments  I  give  the  gist  or  the 
actual  text  of  some  of  the  replies  received.  One 
correspondent  wrote  to  say  that  he  hadn't  got  no 
books,  but  would  sell  us  a  fox-terrier  pup,  if  that 
would  do  instead,  and  then  he  proceeded  to 
enumerate  at  great  length  what  he  called  its 
'  pints,'  concluding  with  the  remark  that  he  had 
sent  it  off  that  very  evening  by  passenger,  train. 
It  turned  up,  sure  enough,  in  the  morning, 
sorrowful  of  countenance,  a  snarling,  disreputable 
cur,  which  we  were  only  too  glad  to  feed  and 
return  to  its  home  without  delay. 

This  was  an  instance,  fortunately  very  rare,  of 
the  wilful  substitution  of  one  article  for  another 
of  a  totally  different  kind  ;  but  nearly  every  letter 
we  took  the  trouble  to  answer  proved  to  be 
misleading  in  one  way  or  another,  and  not  a 
few  contained  a  series  of  palpable  untruths. 
There  would  be  no  advantage  in  reproducing 
many  of  these  epistles,  and,  moreover,  the  cir- 
cumstances surrounding  them  are  not  of  suffi- 
cient interest  to  warrant  more  than  a  passing 
notice.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  they  were  mere 
vendors'  glosses,  not  to  be  taken  au  serieux.  The 
number  of  books  with  *  magnificent  plates  '  or  in 
*  splendid  condition '  that  turned  out  on  inspec- 
tion to  be  the  tramps  and  tatterdemalions  of 
bookish  society  was  very  surprising.  Some  few, 
however,  were  very  curious,  and  others  so  quaint 
in  diction  that  I  have  no  hesitation  in  copying 
them  either  wholly  or  in  part.  Here  is  one : 

5 


66     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

'  Deer  Sur  i  begs  to  state  as  ou  i  ave  sume 
bukes  their  is  Boosey  anecdoates  of  fishin  for  wich 
five  bob  and  a  lang  his  hanglin  skeches  hopen  to 
hoffers  stackhouse  new  history  of  the  Holy  Bibel 
to  pouns  an  a  lot  moar  to  order  deer  Sur  if  you 
be  willin  and  i  wil  sen  to  luke  at  for  2-£  on  the 
nale  your  respect abul .' 

A  '  bob,'  I  may  explain  for  the  benefit  of  my 
American  readers,  is  the  slang  equivalent  of  a 
shilling,  or  twenty-four  cents. 

The  following  reply,  full  of  facetiousness  and 
loaded  with  cunning,  came  from  a  village  near 
Kirkby  Stephen,  in  Westmoreland  : 

'SIR 

'  Seeing  your  advt  in  the  Gazete  I  hasten  to 
copie  out  the  titles  of  some  books  which  have 
been  in  my  family  for  I  dont  know  how  long.  A 
Bookseller  come  up  from  Lancaster  last  Toosday 
and  wanted  to  have  them  sore  but  as  I  could  see 
he  wanted  to  cheat  me  I  thought  it  better  tell 
him  so  in  plain  English  which  is  the  way  of  yours 
truly  who  is  a  wrestling  man  and  champion 
chucker  out  of  these  parts  round  about.  Am 
open  to  good  offer  for  the  lot  but  will  sell  any  at 
following  and  no  discount.  Ellicot  Lectures  on 
J.  Christ,  los.  Durny  Histoir  de  Romans,  vol.  4, 
6s.  Stock  Exchange  year  Book  for  1884,  75 ; 
Ante  Baccus,  a  choise  volume  bound  in  calf, 
173.  6d.  Scrope  Days  and  Nights  of  Fishing 
1843,  i2s.  The  Female  Parson  43,  and  plenty 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         67 

more  too  numerous  till  I  see  what  you  are  made 
of.     Please  write  at  once  if  you  want  any. 

'  Yours  truly .' 

The  upshot  of  this  was  that  we  said  we  should 
like  to  see  Scrope  and  the  '  Female  Parson,'  but 
our  bellicose  correspondent  refused  to  part  with 
either  till  he  got  the  money,  for  he  did  not,  he 
said,  intend  to  trouble  himself  about  useless 
references.  So  the  money  was  sent,  and  in  due 
course  the  books  arrived,  carriage  not  paid.  The 
'  Female  Parson,'  which  we  had  never  heard  of 
before,  proved  to  be  worthless,  but  Scrope's 
'  Salmon  Fishing '  was  really  a  beautiful  copy  of 
the  first  edition  in  the  original  cloth,  and  this  it 
was  that  had  doubtless  tempted  the  Lancaster 
bookseller. 

Then  there  was  a  lady  in  Somersetshire  who 
kept  up  a  correspondence  for  over  a  month.  She 
had  a  splendid  copy,  so  she  said,  of  Sturm's 
'  Reflections,'  which  she  was  ready  to  sell  for  155. 
In  vain  was  she  informed  that  the  book  was  not 
of  a  kind  to  interest  us ;  she  knew  better,  and  per- 
sistently lowered  the  price,  is.  at  a  bid,  till  her 
letters  had  in  sheer  desperation  to  be  put  in  the 
waste-paper  basket.  We  found  ladies,  as  a  rule, 
distressing  correspondents,  who  flatly  refused  to 
be  put  off  with  a  courteous  negative.  With  them 
it  was  simply  a  question  of  price,  and  had  we 
been  persuaded  by  their  blandishments,  we  should 
soon  have  had  a  cellar  full  of  sermons,  Gospel 

5—2 


68     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

Magazines,  and  all  the  rubbish  that  Time  refuses 
to  annihilate  and  men  to  buy. 

One  of  the  most  extraordinary  letters  we  ever 
received  came  from  a  clergyman  in  the  Midlands, 
whose  disgust  for  Pierce  Egan  and  his  school  was 
so  great  that  he  had  determined  to  sacrifice  'Tom 
and  Jerry  '  for  203.: 

'  DEAR  SIR, 

'  I  much  regret  troubling  you  with  a  book 
which  has,  to  me,  been  a  source  of  grievous  dis- 
appointment, and  positive  danger  to  my  children. 
How  anyone  could  have  written  such  a  wicked 
history  of  debauchery  and  human  extravagance  is 
indeed  surprising,  and  I  have  thought  many  a 
time  of  consigning  it  to  the  flames,  so  that  in  a 
measure  it  might  follow  its  disreputable  author. 
I  allude  to  "  Life  in  London ;  or  the  Day  and 
Night  Scenes  of  Jerry  Hawthorn,  Esq.,  and  his 
Elegant  Friend,  Corinthian  Tom,  accompanied 
by  Bob  Logic,  the  Oxonian,  in  their  Rambles  and 
Sprees  through  the  Metropolis,"  by  Pierce  Egan. 
This  work  has,  I  regret  to  say,  been  in  my  family 
for  very  many  years — more  than  I  care  to  count — 
and  I  would  willingly  part  with  it,  although  there 
is  nothing  I  dislike  so  much  as  severing  old 
associations,  however  much  to  my  distaste  they 
may  be.  If  you  like,  I  will  dispose  of  the  book 
for  £i,  which  perhaps,  from  a  marketable  point 
of  view,  it  may  be  worth. 

'  I  am,  dear  sir, 

'  Yours  very  truly .' 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         69 

There  is,  of  course,  no  denying  that  the  morality 
of  Jerry  Hawthorn,  Esq.,  and  his  elegant  friend 
would  have  to  be  searched  for  in  case  its  existence 
were  seriously  disputed ;  but  it  seems  passing 
strange  that  so  small  a  sum  as  2os.  should  be 
able  to  smooth  away  all  remembrance  of  the  orgies 
of  Drury  Lane  and  the  crapulence  of  its  dirty 
gin  vaults,  cider  cellars  and  night-houses,  which 
had  so  mortally  offended  the  worthy  clergyman. 

He  was  indeed  quite  right  in  removing  the 
book  from  the  reach  of  his  children;  but  what 
about  our  morality,  and  that  of  the  person  to 
whom,  for  anything  he  knew  to  the  contrary,  we 
might  sell  Pierce  Egan's  free  and  easy  romance  ? 
The  book  came,  and  proved,  as  was  half  sus- 
pected, to  be  Hotten's  reprint  of  1869,  with 
which  lovers  of  this  class  of  literature  will  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  experiences  of  the  For- 
gotten Lore  Society  in  its  efforts  to  rescue  good 
but  unfortunate  books  from  the  apathy  of  neglect. 
The  object  was  a  good  one,  though  the  reward 
was  practically  nil.  Let  us  reflect  for  a  moment 
that  even  the  few  books  of  antiquity  which  have 
come  down  to  make  us  richer  are  for  the  most 
part  imperfect,  and  we  shall  see  the  necessity  of 
taking  extreme  care  of  the  important  ones  that 
are  written  now,  and  of  doing  everything  in  our 
power  to  prevent  their  destruction  at  the  hands 
of  unappreciative  owners. 

The  mere  fact  of  printed  books  being  published 


70     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

in  large  quantities  to  the  edition  does  not  seem  to 
affect  the  question  of  their  existence  in  the  long- 
run.  All  alike,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  will  go 
down  the  long  road  in  time,  and  our  descendants, 
more  or  less  remote,  will  only  hear  of  them  in  a 
casual  and  traditional  way.  Tacitus  was  one  of 
the  most  popular  Roman  authors  of  his  time,  and 
yet  he  only  lives  to  us  in  fragments,  notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  copies  of  his  '  History '  were  disseminated 
throughout  the  empire.  Every  public  library  in 
Rome  was  compelled  to  have  at  least  one  copy, 
and  no  fewer  than  ten  transcriptions  were  made 
every  year  at  the  charge  of  the  State.  Plutarch 
wrote  fourteen  biographies  that  are  missing  now, 
and  of  251  books  quoted  by  him  more  than  eighty 
are  absolutely  unknown.  The  Emperor  Claudius 
wrote  a  '  History  of  the  Etruscans/  which  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case  must  have  had  a  wide 
circulation ;  Julius  Caesar,  a  slashing  criticism  of 
Cato's  life  and  acts ;  Lucullus,  a  history  of  the 
Marsi.  All  these  have  vanished.  Of  the  forty  plays 
of  Aristophanes  but  eleven  remain.  Menander  is 
unknown  except  by  name,  and  ^schylus  is  in 
rags.  Porphyry's  diatribe  against  the  Christians, 
the  most  important  book  of  its  kind  that  any 
Christian  could  have  at  his  command,  has  vanished, 
and  in  all  likelihood  will  never  be  restored. 

Nor  need  we  go  to  ancient  Greece  or  Rome 
for  such  instances.  Several  poems  by  Shelley 
have  completely  disappeared  already,  and  some 


The  Forgotten  Lore  Society         71 

of  Byron's  have  been,  more  than  once,  at  their 
last  gasp.  Old  English  ballads  and  songs  have 
been  '  lost '  by  hundreds  at  a  time,  and  nearly  all 
the  records  dealing  with  the  private  life  of  Oliver 
Cromwell  are  missing.  The  story  of  Carlyle's 
'  Squire  Papers '  is  a  characteristic  one,  and  dis- 
tinctly to  the  point.  While  that  author  was 
laboriously  collating  the  scraps  of  evidence  rela- 
tive to  the  great  Protector  that  had  survived  the 
honest  but  mistaken  zeal  of  triumphing  Royalists, 
he  received  a  letter  from  an  unknown  correspon- 
dent, who  stated  that  he  possessed  a  mass  of 
Parliamentary  documents,  among  them  the  diary 
of  an  ancestor,  one  Samuel  Squire,  a  subaltern  in 
the  '  Stilton  Troop '  of  Ironsides.  The  letter  was 
accompanied  by  extracts  from  this  diary  and 
other  papers,  and  went  on  to  say  that  the  writer, 
who  had  been  brought  up  to  regard  Cromwell  in 
the  very  worst  possible  light,  and  his  own  ancestor 
with  shame  as  the  aider  and  abettor  of  an  atrocious 
crime,  was  undecided  what  to  do  with  the  originals. 
Several  letters  passed,  and  at  last  Carlyle  wrote 
to  a  friend  living  in  the  neighbourhood,  asking 
him  to  see  his  correspondent,  and  persuade  him 
of  his  undoubted  duty,  which  was  at  least  to  sub- 
mit documents  of  such  great  importance  to 
examination. 

Unfortunately,  the  friend  was  absent,  and  by  the 
time  he  returned  the  papers  had  been  destroyed. 
They  may,  of  course,  have  had  no  existence,  but 
Carlyle  himself  was  of  a  contrary  opinion,  for 


72     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

later  on  he  received  a  heavy  packet  containing 
copies  of  thirty-five  letters  of  Oliver  Cromwell, 
written  in  a  style  apparently  contemporary,  and 
referring  to  incidents  that  no  one  who  had  not 
made  a  careful  and  exhaustive  study  of  his  life 
and  times,  and  who  was  not  thoroughly  conversant 
with  all  the  available  material,  would  have  been  in 
the  least  able  to  reproduce. 

The  records  were  destroyed  because,  as  the 
owner  said,  he  felt  that,  one  way  or  another,  the 
manuscripts  would  be  got  from  him  and  made 
public,  and  'what  could  that  amount  to  but  a 
new  Guy  Fawkes  cellar  and  infernal  machine  to 
explode  the  cathedral  city  where  he  lived,  and  all 
its  coteries,  and  almost  dissolve  Nature  for  the 
time  being?'  Either  this  man  was  a  learned  forger 
or  a  singularly  narrow-minded  and  obstinate  type 
of  destroyer  whose  ravages  can  be  traced  through 
the  centuries,  and  whose  example  will  never  cease 
to  be  followed  so  long  as  paper  remains  unable  to 
resist  the  assaults  of  the  bigot  and  the  outrages 
of  the  Goth. 

That  will  be  ever,  and  hence  it  is  that  in  all 
things  literary  preservation  is  the  greatest  of  the 
virtues.  What  part  of  a  century's  product  to 
preserve  and  what  to  destroy  is  a  problem,  not 
for  us,  but  for  the  century  to  come,  and  for  many 
centuries  after  that.  In  fact,  it  is  Time's  problem, 
which  Time  alone  can  solve. 


CHAPTER  V. 

SOME  HUNTING-GROUNDS  OF  LONDON. 

AT  the  present  time  there  are,  if  the  Post- 
Office  Directory  is  to  be  believed,  about 
450  booksellers  in  London;  but  in  this 
computation  are  included  publishers,  stationers, 
and  even  bookbinders — in  fact,  almost  everyone 
who  has  anything  whatever  to  do  with  books — 
so  that  the  figures  are  by  no  means  to  be  relied 
upon.  The  number  of  booksellers  who  make  a 
speciality  of  second-hand  volumes  is  very  much 
less  than  450,  if  we  include  only  those  who  follow 
a  single  business,  namely,  that  of  buying  and 
selling  books,  and  very  much  greater  if  we  add 
to  the  list  the  army  of  general  dealers  who  sell 
books  occasionally,  or  as  an  adjunct  to  some 
other  occupation. 

The  real  book-hunter  does  not  follow  the  Direc- 
tory, but  his  nose,  which  frequently  leads  him 
into  strange  places  where  there  are  no  recognised 
booksellers,  yet  booksellers  in  plenty — a  seeming 
paradox,  which  is  readily  explained  by  the  fact 
that  there  are  multitudes  of  what  may,  without 


74     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

offence,  be  called  '  book-jobbers,'  whose  names 
are  either  not  in  the  Directory  at  all,  or  appear 
there  under  some  other  designation. 

A  man  may  buy  up  a  roomful  of  furniture, 
taking  the  books  of  necessity ;  or  a  houseful,  and 
with  the  mass  of  goods  and  chattels  perhaps 
hundreds  of  volumes  which  are  not  thought  good 
enough  to  be  disposed  of  separately,  and  are 
therefore  cleared  out  at  a  nominal  figure,  and 
retailed  anywhere  and  everywhere  as  circum- 
stance and  opportunity  suggest.  Are  these  dealers, 
brokers,  and  what  not,  booksellers  ?  Heaven 
save  the  mark,  no !  not  in  a  specific  sense ;  but 
they  sell  books,  notwithstanding,  and  their  shops 
are,  in  very  truth,  recognised  hunting-grounds 
of  the  Metropolis.  There  are  literally  hundreds 
of  them,  and  they  are  to  be  met  with,  as  a 
rule,  close  together,  where  rents  are  low  and 
the  footsteps  of  the  income-tax  fiend  are  un- 
known. 

This  is  one  description  of  bookseller,  but  there 
are  several  others:  the  man  with  the  barrow, 
for  instance,  who  works  at  his  trade  all  the  week, 
and  comes  out  on  Saturday  afternoons  and  Sun- 
day mornings  in  certain  localities,  to  do  what 
bartering  he  can  with  casual  passers-by. 

To  compare  these  classes  with  the  recognised 
booksellers,  some  of  whom  have  an  immense 
turnover,  would,  of  course,  be  absurd  ;  but  they 
have  their  uses,  and  instances  are  not  wanting 
in  which  mightily  successful  dealers  have  begun 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London    75 

in  this  humble  manner,  and  literally  forced 
their  way  up  from  the  pavements  of  the  East 
End  or  the  Surrey  side  to  more  pleasant  places 
in  the  West.  High  or  low,  rich  or  poor,  their 
shops  or  stalls  are  alike  objects  of  extreme  interest 
to  thousands  who  have  learned  enough  to  know 
that  the  best  books  are  generally  the  cheapest. 
Whatever  the  size  of  the  premises  they  own, 
they  contribute  in  their  several  degrees  to  the 
wants  of  all  classes  of  book-men,  whose  delight 
it  is  to  forage  for  themselves,  and  to  seek  that 
they  may  find.  The  lordly  collector  who  pays 
by  cheque  may  or  may  not  be  a  book-hunter. 
If  not,  he  misses  much  of  the  pleasure  that 
accompanies  the  tracking  down,  step  by  step,  of 
some  coveted  volume  which  is,  perhaps,  more  or 
less  easily  obtainable  almost  at  any  time  in  ex- 
change for  plenty  of  money,  but  is  rarely  met  with 
casually. 

It  is  this  tracking  down,  hunting,  which  is  the 
true  book-lover's  chief  delight,  and,  needless  to 
say,  his  primary  object  is  not  to  secure  books  of 
great  price  for  a  nominal  sum.  If  it  were,  he 
would  at  the  end  of  a  long  life  have  few  successes 
to  report,  for  the  search  for  rarities  is  so  thorough 
and  systematic  that  hardly  anything  of  substantial 
pecuniary  value  can  run  the  gauntlet  all  the  way 
to  the  shop-board  or  the  barrow.  The  harvest 
has  all  been  gathered  long  ago,  and  nothing  is 
now  left  but  gleanings  in  fields  already  raked. 
The  book-lover  eliminates  as  far  as  possible  the 


76    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

question  of  value  from  his  walks  abroad,  and 
leaves  his  gold  at  home  to  be  expended  as  oppor- 
tunity arises  in  the  auction-room,  where  open  com- 
petition holds  the  market  in  a  virtual  equipoise, 
or  in  the  shops  of  recognised  dealers,  who  hold 
his  commissions  and  are  always  on  the  look-out 
for  important  works.  He  is  aware,  however,  that 
intrinsically  good  books  are  to  be  met  with  con- 
tinually in  all  sorts  of  places,  and  it  is  these  that 
he  hopes  to  obtain,  and  from  these  that  his 
library  is  most  often  recruited.  Between  one 
edition  of  some  interesting  or  instructive  book 
and  another  there  may  be  an  immense  disparity 
in  cost,  but  very  little  textual  difference,  or  even 
none  at  all.  In  some  cases  the  cheaper  volume 
may  be  the  more  accurate  of  the  two,  and  may 
also  contain  additional  matter,  which  renders  it 
more  important  and  desirable  from  every  point 
of  view,  except  a  sentimental  one. 

It  is  the  search  for  volumes  of  this  kind,  sound 
and  honest,  yet  not  aristocratic,  that  has  kept 
the  bookstalls  open  for  300  years  and  more,  for, 
to  be  precise,  we  know  that  St.  Paul's  Church- 
yard and  Fleet  Street  were,  in  addition  to  other 
less  known  localities,  much  frequented  by  book- 
men as  far  back  as  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII. 
In  these  districts  Cardinal  Wolsey's  agents 
kept  a  sharp  look-out  for  copies  of  '  A  Supplica- 
cyon  for  the  Beggars/  which  Simon  Fyshe,  'a 
zealous  man  for  the  reformation  of  abuses  in 
the  Church,'  had  boldly  published  and  was 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London    77 

scattering  abroad  in  the  year  1524,  and  which 
seems  to  have  had  a  stealthy  run  for  six  years, 
for  it  was  not  until  1530  that  it  was  openly  pro- 
hibited by  proclamation.  Neither  Fleet  Street 
nor  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  is,  however,  a  hunting- 
ground  for  book-men  now.  The  former  is  wholly 
given  up  to  newspapers  and  machinery,  and  the 
latter  to  drapers  and  warehousemen,  and  there 
is  no  room  anywhere  for  small  dealers  in  second- 
hand books. 

Indeed,  the  whole  of  London  has  been  turned 
topsy-turvy  so  far  as  they  are  concerned.  New 
localities  they  abhor,  and  the  greater  part  of 
London  is  new,  in  the  sense  that  very  many  old 
districts  and  streets  have  been  rebuilt,  or  entirely 
swept  away  by  the  march  of  improvement  and 
the  increasing  desire  for  wide  thoroughfares  and 
open  spaces.  What  place  more  famous  once 
than  Little  Britain,  which  during  the  last  twenty 
or  thirty  years  has  swallowed  up  Duck  Lane — 
another  book-hunting  locality — bodily  ?  It  was 
here  that  Thomas  Britton,  a  coal-dealer,  prowled 
around  during  his  spare  moments,  pouncing  upon 
anything  and  everything  that  took  his  fancy  ;  re- 
joicing especially  in  works  of  magic,  witchcraft, 
and  astrology,  either  printed  or  in  manuscript. 
The  catalogue  of  his  library  is  extant,  and  it  is 
clear  that  he  was  a  very  far-sighted  and  keen- 
scented  man,  and  one,  too,  who  was  blessed  with 
a  taste  and  discrimination  most  rare  among 
dealers  in  small  coal.  In  Little  Britain  '  Paradise 


78     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

Lost '  went  begging.  The  stalls  must  have  been 
littered  with  the  very  first,  or  1667,  issue,  for  in 
that  year  the  Earl  of  Dorset  had  a  copy  of  it 
thrust  under  his  nose  and  pressed  upon  him  by 
a  bookseller  who  complained  most  bitterly  that 
he  could  not  get  rid  of  his  stock.  About  the 
year  1760  the  whole  of  the  trade  had  vanished 
from  Little  Britain,  though  at  the  present  time 
the  once-famous  thoroughfare  boasts  one  book- 
seller and  also  one  newsagent,  the  sole  repre- 
sentatives of  past  times.  As  for  the  rest  of  the 
denizens,  they  follow  the  more  prosaic  occupa- 
tions of  builders,  bootmakers,  butchers,  hair- 
dressers, restaurant-keepers  and  publicans,  the 
last-named  being  especially  in  evidence.  In  this 
locality,  as  in  many  others,  the  thirst  for  know- 
ledge has  been  quenched,  and  the  thirst  for  beer 
become  almighty. 

So,  too,  Moorfields  was  once  classic  ground,  as 
also  the  Poultry,  but  both  places  have  been  dead 
to  bookish  fame  this  hundred  years.  There  are 
now  no  booksellers'  shops  in  the  Poultry,  though 
Moorfields  just  saves  itself,  for  it  rejoices  in  the 
presence  of  a  music  publisher  and  a  stationer. 
Speaking  generally,  the  second-hand  book  trade 
has  been  driven  bodily  out  of  the  central  and 
eastern  parts  of  London,  and  has  settled  itself  in 
the  streets  west  of  Temple  Bar  and  Holborn 
Viaduct,  always  avoiding  the  Strand,  which,  for 
some  reason  or  other,  has  ever  been  regarded  as 
an  inhospitable  quarter.  There  are  certainly 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London    79 

booksellers'  shops  in  this  important  thoroughfare, 
three,  I  believe,  is  the  precise  number,  but  they 
are  hardly  sufficient  to  invest  it  with  the  dignity 
and  title  of  a  '  locality.' 

In  contrast  to  this,  Holborn  and  the  streets  ad- 
joining have  always  been  a  good  hunting-ground, 
and  are  so  to-day.  '  The  Vision  of  Piers  Plow- 
man '  was  printed  and  sold  in  Ely  Rents  so  long 
ago  as  1550,  and  Snow  Hill  and  Gray's  Inn  Gate 
were  both  world-wide  localities,  though  the  glory 
of  all  these  places  has  since  departed.  Up  to 
within  five  years  ago  there  was  a  shop  on  the 
right-hand  side  of  Gray's  Inn  Lane,  just  out  of 
Holborn,  given  up  chiefly  to  the  sale  of  news- 
papers. It  is  shut  up  now,  and,  according  to  all 
accounts,  will  never  be  opened  again,  which  is  a 
pity,  for  it  is  a  shop,  or  more  probably  the  cur- 
tailment of  much  larger  premises,  with  a  notable 
history.  Here,  in  1750  or  thereabouts,  carried  on 
business  one  Thomas  Osborne,  who,  although 
ignorant  to  a  degree,  brutal  in  his  manners,  and 
surly  beyond  description,  managed  to  build  up 
the  largest  business  of  its  kind  in  London,  or, 
indeed,  anywhere  else.  Customers  ignored  Tom 
Osborne's  curses,  and  bought  his  books  when 
they  could,  for  sometimes,  when  particularly 
morose,  he  would  shut  himself  up,  like  a  hermit, 
'with  his  lumber,'  as  a  historian  of  the  day 
termed  the  thirty  whole  libraries  which  he  had 
amassed,  and  refuse  to  treat  at  all.  Nevertheless, 
Osborne  prospered  exceedingly,  and  in  the  latter 


80     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

years  of  his  life  was  the  owner  of  a  country  house 
and  '  dog  and  duck  shootings,'  all  purchased  and 
kept  up  from  the  profits  derived  from  this  shop 
in  Gray's  Inn  Lane.  The  prices  he  asked  were 
the  most  he  thought  he  had  the  remotest  chance 
of  getting,  and  were  often  outrageous  and  extor- 
tionate, though  at  other  times  very  much  below 
what  he  might  have  obtained  had  he  known  his 
business  properly.  He  seems  to  have  taken  a 
bird's-eye  view  of  his  stock,  and  to  have  appraised 
the  value  of  individual  books,  not  by  reference  to 
their  rarity,  but  by  means  of  a  fractional  calcula- 
tion based  upon  the  total  cost — a  rough-and-ready 
method  of  trading  which  attracted  book-buyers 
from  every  part  of  London,  and  reconciled  them 
to  his  insolence.  Though  Osborne  was  not  the 
first  dealer  to  issue  a  catalogue — one  T.  Green,  of 
Spring  Gardens,  being  credited  with  having 
revived,  in  1729,  this  time-worn  method  of  selling 
books — he  carried  on  a  more  extensive  business  in 
this  way  than  anyone  who  had  preceded  him,  and 
in  addition  had  the  supreme  honour  of  being 
knocked  down  by  Dr.  Johnson  with  a  huge  folio 
which  the  latter  wanted  to  buy,  and  he  (Osborne) 
refused  to  sell  at  any  price.  Either  of  these 
claims  to  distinction  would  have  made  the  fortune 
of  any  man.  It  is  stated  by  Sir  John  Hawkins 
that  the  book  which  Dr.  Johnson  wielded  with 
such  effect  was  the  '  Biblia  Graeca  Septuaginta,' 
printed  at  Frankfort  in  1594.  The  identical 
volume  was  in  the  possession  of  Thorpe,  a  Cam- 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London     8 1 

bridge  bookseller,  in  1812,  but  what  has  become 
of  it  since  I  do  not  know. 

Though  Osborne's  shop,  or  what  remains  of  it, 
is  now  closed,  the  neighbourhood  is  still  as  largely 
interested  in  the  sale  of  books  as  ever,  or  perhaps 
even  more  so,  for  there  has  been  an  immi- 
gration from  other  quarters  of  London  which 
improvements  have  converted  into  uncongenial 
ground. 

The  new  Law  Courts  and  their  approaches 
stand  upon  the  sites  of  Butchers'  Row,  Shire 
Lane,  where  Elias  Ashmole  lived,  and  countless 
courts  and  alleys  beside.  Clare  Market  has 
vanished  within  the  last  two  or  three  years,  and 
Clement's  Inn,  with  its  narrow  passages  and 
dingy  chambers,  has  been  entirely  rebuilt.  Even 
Drury  Lane,  sacred  to  the  memory  of  an  army  of 
general  dealers  who,  up  to  within  a  comparatively 
short  time  ago,  bought  books  by  weight,  is  now 
past  praying  for  to  all  appearances,  for  hardly  a 
book  of  any  kind  is  to  be  met  with  from  one  end 
of  this  grimy  thoroughfare  to  the  other.  Let  us 
walk  into  Bozier's  Court,  which  is  further  to  the 
west,  and  we  miss  the  shop  which  Lord  Lytton 
has  immortalized  in 'My  Novel';  in  fact,  the  court 
itself  is  plastered  all  over  with  advertisement 
posters,  and  awaits  the  wreckers,  for  it  is  doomed. 
King  William  Street,  Strand,  was  a  booksellers' 
resort  for  a  century  and  more,  but  the  fraternity 
are  leaving  one  by  one,  and  only  a  very  few  are 
to  be  met  there  now.  Westminster  Hall,  for 

6 


82     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

centuries  a  virtual  library,  is  shut  up,  and  echoes 
spring  from  its  stones  when  any  casual  stranger, 
armed  with  an  order,  is  allowed  to  ramble  through 
Rufus's  deserted  pile.  In  fact,  wherever  we 
stray,  north,  south,  east,  or  west,  we  are  forced 
to  the  conclusion  that  London  has  changed  so 
utterly  within  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years 
that  it  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a  different 
place. 

And  the  booksellers  appear  to  have  changed, 
too,  for  there  are  no  '  characters '  among  them, 
or,  at  any  rate,  very  few.  Every  now  and  then 
you  will  meet  with  some  strange  mortal,  who 
looks  as  though  he  had  been  transported  bodily 
from  the  last  century  and  tumbled  uncere- 
moniously into  a  brand  new  shop,  with  coloured 
glass  above  the  portal,  and  fresh  paint  about  the 
front ;  but  you  have  hardly  time  to  ruminate  on 
the  mutability  of  things  under  the  sun  and  he  is 
gone,  to  make  way,  perhaps,  for  a  dealer  in  some- 
thing superlatively  new.  An  antiquary  of  the 
stamp  of  Francis  Grose,  the  '  chiel '  who  went 
about  taking  notes,  would  stand  aghast,  then 
hasten  to  depart,  could  he  but  see  the  London  of 
to-day. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  book- 
hunting  as  a  pastime  is  extinct  in  modern  Babylon. 
On  the  contrary,  there  are  yet  plenty  of  nooks 
and  corners,  and  pestilential-looking  alleys,  that 
Death  and  the  jerry-builder  have  apparently 
forgotten,  and  these  places,  we  may  be  certain, 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London     83 

harbour  many  folios.  As  a  fact,  I  know  they  do; 
for  in  my  time,  and  to  some  extent  even  yet,  I 
have  been  and  am  a  wanderer  about  such  places, 
and  have,  on  occasion,  picked  up  many  interesting 
mementos  there.  What  I  merely  wish  to  insist 
upon  is  that  the  older  and  recognised  localities, 
which  our  fathers  would  naturally  have  visited  a 
couple  of  decades  or  more  ago  in  their  search  for 
old  books,  are  not  those  which  would,  as  a  rule, 
afford  much  scope  for  enterprise  now.  We  must 
go  further  afield,  and  not  expect  to  find  a  mass 
of  stalls  huddled  together  in  a  single  street,  as 
though  one  locality  had  tapped  and  drained  the 
life-blood  of  the  rest.  Circumstances  have 
changed,  and  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century  booksellers  have,  to  a  great  extent, 
ceased  to  be  gregarious,  except  in  Holywell  Street, 
or,  as  it  is  more  generally  called,  '  Booksellers' 
Row,'  once  the  abode  of  literary  hacks  and  bailiff- 
haunted  debtors,  which  even  yet  has  an  old-world 
look  with  its  overhanging  houses  and  narrow 
roadway.  Here  there  certainly  is  a  long  double 
procession  of  bookshops,  many  open  to  the  street, 
every  one  of  them  crammed  from  floor  to  ceiling 
with  great  piles  of  lore. 

And  Holywell  Street,  be  it  said,  is  such  historic 
and  classic  ground,  that  it  is  threatened  every 
day  by  the  improver,  who  longs  to  lay  its  north 
side  open  to  the  Strand,  and  will,  we  may  be  sure, 
effect  his  purpose  in  the  end.  It  was  here  that 
Lord  Macaulay  used  to  take  his  walks  abroad  in 

6—2 


84     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

search  of  books.  As  a  rule  he  began  and  ended 
there  ;  for  a  whole  day's  pilgrimage  would  not 
suffice  to  unearth  more  than  a  fractional  part  of 
the  immense  store  of  volumes  that  the  labour  of 
years  had  accumulated,  and  which  was  continu- 
ally being  decimated  and  renewed.  In  his  day 
there  were  more  books  to  be  seen  and  handled 
there  than  now,  for  some  of  the  shops  have  since 
been  devoted  to  other  trades.  In  Holywell  Street 
John  Payne  Collier  was  as  well  known  as  his  own 
'  History  of  English  Dramatic  Poetry,'  which, 
nearly  sixty  years  ago,  littered  the  stalls,  doubtless 
to  his  great  disgust,  seeing  that  to  be  in  evidence 
there  to  any  extent  was  then,  as  now,  proof 
positive  that  the  '  remainder-man '  had  been  at 
work,  to  the  bane  of  the  author  and  publisher 
alike.  Mr.  W.  Roberts,  in  his  charming  '  Book- 
hunter  in  London,'  narrates  that  Collier  once 
picked  up  in  Holywell  Street  for  the  merest  trifle 
a  copy  of  John  Hughes's  'Calypso  and  Tele- 
machus,'  an  opera  in  three  acts,  first  published  in 
1712,  which  contained  thirty-eight  unpublished 
couplets  in  the  handwriting  of  Pope.  Halliwell- 
Phillipps  was  also  an  inveterate  rambler  up  and 
down  this  thoroughfare,  and  several  of  his 
Shakespearean  quartos  came  from  there  in  days 
when  these  small  but  almost  priceless  volumes 
were  not  so  widely  and  persistently  sought  for  as 
they  are  now.  In  fact,  we  have  it  in  his  own 
words  that  when  he  first  began  to  collect  anything 
and  everything  that  related  in  whatever  degree 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London     85 

to  the  great  dramatist,  these  early  quartos  were 
frequently  to  be  met  with  at  prices  which,  com- 
paratively speaking,  sound  simply  ludicrous  in 
our  ears.  Should  anyone  rescue  a  copy  now 
from  some  forgotten  lumber-room,  the  fact  is 
heralded  by  the  press,  and  accounted  most  extra- 
ordinary, as  indeed  it  is ;  for  everyone,  the  world 
over,  is  on  the  look-out  for  rarities  such  as  these. 
Though  Holywell  Street  yet  stands,  and  does  a 
thriving  trade  among  the  bookish,  let  not  anyone 
think  that  much  is  to  be  got  for  nothing  there. 
On  the  contrary,  the  dealers  who  inhabit  it  are 
better  versed  than  most  people  in  the  importance 
of  each  and  every  book  they  part  with  or  throw 
into  the  boxes  which  receive  the  outcasts  of 
literature.  There  are,  however,  good  and  valuable 
books  by  the  thousand  to  be  met  with  by  anyone 
who  does  not  object  to  pay  a  fair  and  reasonable 
price  for  them.  To  this  extent,  and  in  this  par- 
ticular, is  Booksellers'  Row  the  queen  of  London 
streets.  From  these  remarks  I  except,  of  course, 
the  extremely  important  shops  of  the  West-End 
dealers  into  which  correspondence  flows  from 
every  part  of  the  world. 

This  chapter  is  devoted  to  the  *  Hunting- 
grounds  '  of  London,  and  I  deny  that  a  collector 
who  gives  a  standing  order  either  verbally  or  by 
letter  to  a  bookseller  for  some  work  he  particu- 
larly wants  is  a  book-hunter  at  all,  at  least  so  far 
as  that  particular  transaction  is  concerned.  To 
my  mind  Nimrod  must  handle  his  own  bow  and 


86     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

not  entrust  it  to  a  deputy,  even  though  he  might  by 
the  rules  of  the  chase  be  absolutely  entitled  to  the 
quarry  which  the  skill  of  the  latter  had  brought 
down.  Let  him  go  where  he  will,  East  or  West, 
the  point  of  the  compass  makes  no  matter,  he  is 
a  hunter  only  when  he  prosecutes  his  own 
inquiries  and  carries  out  in  person  all  his  arrange- 
ments. So  we  will  avoid  the  great  firms  of  book- 
sellers, although  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that 
almost  any  scarce  work  could  be  procured  sooner 
or  later  from  them,  and  go  off  on  a  chase  in  which 
we  shall  never,  in  all  human  probability,  meet 
with  any  great  prize,  and  may  have  to  be  satisfied 
with  a  little,  that  little,  however,  being  much 
from  many  points  of  view. 

At  the  present  day  books  of  all  sorts  are  to  be 
met  with  in  great  profusion  in  Farringdon  Street. 
Every  Saturday  morning  throughout  the  year 
light  hand-carts  to  the  number,  perhaps,  of  thirty 
or  forty,  stand  in  a  long  line  against  the  curb,  and 
each  is  packed  with  works  of  all  kinds.  I  am 
bound  to  admit  that  obsolete  school-books  and 
forgotten  sermons  constitute  the  great  majority  of 
these  waifs  and  strays,  but  there  is  always  a  wide 
choice  of  useful  books  to  be  got  for  purely 
nominal  sums,  and  occasionally  one  that  is  rare 
and  valuable.  Personally  I  never  met  with  a 
really  scarce  book  in  Farringdon  Street,  but  three 
years  ago — and  I  mention  this  at  the  risk  of  being 
charged  with  travelling  from  the  subject  —  I 
bought  there  the  undoubtedly  original  study  by 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London     87 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  for  the  portrait  of  the  Right 
Honourable  George  Seymour  Conway,  afterwards 
Lord  George  Seymour  Conway.  The  portrait 
was  painted  in  1770,  and  engraved  in  mezzotint 
by  Edward  Fisher  the  year  following.  The  study 
is  in  oils,  on  thick  paper  of  about  twelve  inches 
in  height,  and  is  so  remarkable  as  a  work  of  art, 
that  it  is  a  wonder  it  could  have  escaped  recog- 
nition for  an  hour,  instead,  as  was  the  fact,  for  a 
whole  morning. 

Should  Farringdon  Street  prove  unpropitious, 
Sunday  morning  in  any  week  will  see  Lambeth 
Marshes  and  the  New  Cut,  both  on  the  Surrey 
side,  crowded  with  barrows,  and  the  same  remark 
applies  to  the  streets  about  the  Elephant  and 
Castle  on  Saturday  evenings  when  the  weather  is 
fine.  Generally  speaking,  the  peripatetic  book- 
seller is  only  to  be  met  with  on  the  first  and  last 
days  of  the  week,  but  that  he  does  manage  to 
turn  over  a  considerable  part  of  his  stock  in  the 
short  time  available  is  not  to  be  doubted.  He 
may  not  change — many  of  these  men  have  haunted 
the  same  spot  for  years,  and  have  their  recognised 
stands — but  his  stock  is,  in  one  sense,  ever  new. 
A  few  months  ago  I  saw  in  the  Whitechapel 
Road  a  hand -cart  full  of  small  vellum-bound 
volumes,  which  proved  to  be  Greek  and  Latin 
classics,  printed  in  Paris  a  couple  of  centuries  ago. 
The  covers  were  remarkably  fresh  and  clean,  and 
somebody  or  other,  or  rather  a  succession  of 
owners,  must  have  taken  the  greatest  care  of  these 


88     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

little  books,  which  had  thus  ignobly  fallen  into 
the  gutter  at  last.  Next  week  at  the  same  hour, 
they  had  all  gone,  having  been  disposed  of  to 
the  more  learned  inhabitants  of  Bethnal  Green 
at  2d.  apiece. 

If,  however,  wandering  about  the  East  End 
of  London  is  not  to  the  taste  of  the  picker-up 
of  unconsidered  trifles,  there  is  still  the  more 
primitive  kind  of  shops  to  be  visited.  Great 
Turnstile  still  boasts  a  bookseller  or  two,  and  it 
was  here,  it  will  be  remembered,  that  John  Bag- 
ford,  many  years  ago,  divided  his  attention  be- 
tween making  boots  and  shoes  and  ripping  out 
the  title-pages  of  the  books  that  fell  into  his 
sacrilegious  hands.  He  failed  as  a  cobbler,  but 
succeeded  in  amassing  the  most  disreputable  col- 
lection of  titles  that  has  ever  been  got  together. 
The  arch-Vandal  failed  in  everything  but  his 
Vandalism,  and  surely  any  success  is  better  than 
none  at  all.  It  is  said  of  him  that  he  searched 
all  his  life  for  one  of  Caxton's  impossible  title- 
pages,  and  died  of  disappointment,  a  story  which 
is  probably  a  gross  libel  on  his  accomplishments, 
for  Bagford  was  not  by  any  means  an  uneducated 
man. 

Then,  Little  Turnstile  hard  by  is  worth  a 
casual  visit,  and  there  are  many  shops  in  the 
streets  extending  east  and  west  of  St.  Martin's 
Lane  where  books  are  to  be  bought  in  almost 
any  number.  The  newly-built  Charing  Cross 
Road  appears  to  be  under  a  cloud ;  in  fact,  at 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London     89 

this  point  we  must  turn  back  again,  and  make 
direct  for  Holborn,  Bury  Street,  and  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Red  Lion  Square  and  Queen  Square. 

In  Red  Lion  Passage  there  are  several  of  the 
quaintest  shops  imaginable,  one  of  them  kept  by 
a  dealer  who  appears  to  have  a  mania  for  the 
very  largest  folios,  though  I  notice  that  of  late 
he  has  somewhat  fallen  away  from  his  traditional 
custom  in  this  respect.  The  books  stand  on 
their  sides  on  the  floor  in  columns  of  about  six 
feet  high  ;  they  are  piled  on  and  under  the 
counter,  and  are  seen  peeping  out  of  the  black 
darkness  of  a  room  beyond.  Petrarch  would 
have  avoided  this  shop  lest  history  should  repeat 
itself,  and  a  folio  break,  not  his  leg  merely  this 
time,  but  his  neck. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  Passage  is  another 
temple  of  gloom  and  mystery,  for  it  must  be 
observed  that  the  neighbourhood  of  Red  Lion 
Square  is  generally  in  semi-darkness  all  the  year 
round,  except  in  the  winter,  and  then  it  is  frequently 
impossible  to  see  at  all  when  once  the  streets 
are  left.  The  proprietors  of  this  shop  issue  a 
periodical  catalogue,  which  can  be  taken  from  a 
box  at  the  door,  and  it  may  safely  be  said  that 
there  is  no  catalogue  issued  in  London  by  any- 
one which  is  better  worth  glancing  over  than  this, 
notwithstanding  an  occasional  misprint  or  two. 
The  books  are,  generally  speaking,  of  such  an 
unusual  and  out-of-the  way  kind  that  one  cannot 
help  wondering  where  they  all  come  from.  For 


90     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

instance,  '  Ben  Johnson's  English  Dictionary, 
8vo.,  1732,'  must  be  a  remarkable  volume,  and 
the  '  Wuremberg  Chronicle,  folio,  numerous  wood- 
cuts, 1493,'  equally  curious.  Then  there  is 

'  Peasson  on  the  Creed,'  'Jewels,  ,  Works, 

folio,  1611,'  '  Locke,  Humane  Understanding, 
folio,  1706,'  '  Staunton  :  Shakispear,'  and  so  on 
ad  infinitum.  Throughout  the  prices  are  moderate, 
extremely  moderate ;  that,  at  any  rate,  is  a  fact 
worthy  of  distinct  recognition,  and  some  of  the 
books,  too,  are  anything  but  easy  to  procure,  as 
witness  Chaucer's  Works,  folio,  1602,  which  is 
priced  at  £i  ios.,  Grafton's  Chronicle,  folio,  1569, 
£i  55.,  Swan's  '  Speculum  Mundi,'  4to.,  1670,  35., 
and  many  others.  Dark  though  this  shop  may 
be  to  gaze  upon,  I  regard  it  as  a  typical  book- 
man's paradise. 

Paternoster  Row,  further  east  still,  is  now,  of 
course,  the  headquarters  of  the  publishers,  though 
several  second-hand  booksellers  still  linger  there. 
Before  the  Great  Fire  reduced  the  whole  district 
to  ashes  they  had  it  all  their  own  way,  and  when 
the  Row  was  rebuilt  they  flocked  there  once 
more,  to  be  gradually  elbowed  out  by  giant 
houses  which  sell  books  wholesale.  There  is  one 
shop  in  this  thoroughfare  so  completely  wedged 
up  with  books  that  it  is  a  somewhat  difficult 
matter  to  enter  in  at  the  door.  Nobody  who  is 
not  in  the  daily  habit  of  passing  by  could  avoid 
stopping  to  glance  at  the  rows  of  volumes  which 
the  proprietor  has  reared  up  against  a  wall  round 


Some  Hunting-grounds  of  London  91 

the  corner  that  leads  into  St.  Paul's  Churchyard, 
for  he  has  decorated  them  with  innumerable 
strips  of  paper  writ  large  with  pieces  of  advice 
on  things  in  general,  quotations  from  classical 
writers,  the  Bible  and  the  Koran,  which,  though 
they  have  for  the  most  part  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  sale  of  books  of  any  kind,  attract  by 
reason  of  their  quaintness  and  the  strangeness 
of  their  being. 

And  so  we  might  go  wandering  for  ever  about 
New  London,  passing  on  every  side  the  shadows  of 
the  old,  but  seeing  little  of  the  substance.  Book- 
men of  the  true  stamp  are  antiquaries,  to  whom 
novelty  is  abhorrent.  The  pleasantest  places  are 
to  them  those  which  time  has  consecrated  with  a 
gentle  touch,  and  which  reflect  all  their  imagin- 
ings, even  as  they  echo  their  footsteps.  These 
are  departing  under  the  mandate  of  an  inexorable 
law,  and  we  go  with  them. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

VAGARIES   OF   BOOK-HUNTERS. 

TEN  or  fifteen  years  ago  it  was  quite  usual  to 
meet  with  collections  of  title-pages  formed 
by  followers  of  the  immortal  Bagford. 
These  were  to  be  seen  quoted  in  booksellers' 
catalogues  and  displayed  in  the  auction  rooms, 
and  were  commonly  disposed  of  for  small  sums  of 
money — small,  that  is  to  say,  in  comparison  with 
what  would  have  been  realized  for  the  books  them- 
selves had  they  been  allowed  to  remain  in  that 
state  of  life  to  which  the  author  and  others  had 
called  them.  Of  late,  collections  of  title-pages 
have  not  been  very  much  in  evidence  anywhere, 
for  it  is  universally  felt  that  there  is  little  or  no 
romance  surrounding  the  slaughter  even  of  folios, 
to  say  nothing  of  smaller-sized  victims,  and  for 
that  reason  these  scrappy  collections  are  huddled 
out  of  sight  like  family  skeletons.  The  book- 
hunter  of  the  present  day  has  his  foibles,  it  is  true, 
but  he  has  learned  by  experience  and  from  the 
expostulatory  remarks  of  others  that  wild  freaks 
are  completely  out  of  place  in  a  library,  and  so  it 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters  93 

has  come  to  pass  that  books  are  treated  in  a 
different  way  from  what  they  were  only  a  couple 
of  decades  ago,  and  no  one  who  has  the  smallest 
respect  either  for  himself  or  his  vocation  would 
now  either  care  or  dare  to  form  a  collection  of 
title-pages.  Should  he  happen  to  own  one  either 
by  purchase  or  under  circumstances  beyond  his 
control,  he  will  produce  it,  if  at  all,  with  apologies 
and  sighs.  It  is  abundantly  manifest  that  the 
wicked  man  hath  turned  away  from  much  of  his 
wickedness. 

The  reason  of  this  tremendous  transformation 
must  be  put  down  to  the  credit  of  a  rule  which, 
though  formulated  and  preached  at  one  time  by 
the  elite  only,  has  been  insisted  upon  with  such 
pertinacity  that  it  has  gradually  become  diffused 
throughout  the  whole  world  of  collectors,  no 
matter  to  what  objects  of  interest  they  may  direct 
their  attention.  This  rule  is,  that  taste  and  the 
pocket  alike  demand  that  be  a  book  good,  bad,  or 
indifferent  in  its  externals,  it  shall,  nevertheless, 
be  left  untouched  by  its  owner,  who  is  but  its 
temporary  custodian,  and  a  trustee  for  others  who 
shall  come  after  him.  To  rip  out  the  title-page, 
no  matter  with  what  object,  is  an  outrage  on 
decency  which,  it  is  pleasant  to  find,  is  now 
appraised  at  its  proper  pitch  of  enormity.  If  the 
stamp-collector  rejoice  in  the  possession  of  a 
specimen  with  '  original  gum,'  and  rate  its  interest 
and  value  higher  on  that  account,  shall  the  book- 
collector,  who  is  the  oldest,  the  most  learned,  and 


94     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

the  most  aristocratic  of  all  collectors,  give  place  in 
the  matter  of  common-sense  and  discretion  to  the 
product  of  a  frivolous  age  ?  Shall  he  cut  initial 
letters  from  missals  and  other  manuscripts,  and 
insult  the  shades  of  Fust  and  Schoeffer  by  making 
a  senseless  collection  of  colophons  ?  These  things 
were  in  vogue  at  one  time,  but  are  now  frowned 
down  even  by  the  most  ignorant  of  mortals,  since, 
to  put  the  matter  on  no  higher  ground,  the  money 
value  of  old  books  has  considerably  increased 
of  late  years  to  his  certain  knowledge,  and  he 
believes  that  anything  with  curious  type,  the  f  s 
made  so — -/,  and  villainous  prints  scattered  about 
the  text,  must  ex  necessitate  rei  be  worth  its  weight 
in  gold,  and  perhaps  more.  What  a  contrast  is 
this  little  false,  but  preventative,  store  of  know- 
ledge to  the  crass  stupidity  of  the  early  years  of 
the  present  century,  as  exemplified  in  the  persons 
of  the  Bishops,  Canons,  and  Chaplains  of  Lincoln 
Cathedral,  who  permitted  the  choir-boys  to  collect 
illuminated  initials,  and  with  that  object  to  cut 
up  with  their  pen-knives  scores  of  vellum  manu- 
scripts. A  good  many  of  the  Caxtons  from  this 
same  Cathedral  were  purchased  by  Dibdin  for  the 
Althorpe  collection,  and  will  be  found  catalogued 
in  '  A  Lincolne  Nosegaye.'  The  Dean  and 
Chapter,  knowing  little  about  books,  and  caring 
less,  had  disposed  of  them  all  for  a  '  consideration,' 
and  thus  without  thought  stripped  themselves  of 
their  choicest  possessions  next  to  the  Cathedral 
itself. 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters  95 

Of  a  truth,  books  have  only  recently  come  to 
be  regarded  as  possessing  a  sentimental  value 
altogether  distinct  from  considerations  of  utility, 
and  it  is  only  within  the  compass  of  a  com- 
paratively few  years  that  collectors  have  sprung  up 
from  the  very  stones  to  cry  aloud,  and  to  protest 
against  such  wanton  acts  of  mutilation  or  destruc- 
tion as  the  records  of  past  days  almost  choke 
themselves  in  the  echoing  of.  Only  a  little  while 
ago  '  Grangerizing '  was  the  favourite  pastime 
of  thousands  of  persons  of  elegant  leisure,  as 
Griswold  called  the  lazy  dullards  of  his  genera- 
tion, and  what  this  involved  would  be  whis- 
pered in  corners  but  for  the  fact  that  it  was 
for  200  years  unblushingly  shouted  in  the  open 
day. 

During  all  that  period  the  teachings  of  the 
genuine  bibliophiles  had  so  passed  from  deed  and 
truth  into  mere  monotony  of  unbelieved  phrase 
that  no  English  was  literal  enough  to  convert  the 
persons  who  went  about  seeking  material,  at  vast 
expense,  wherewith  to  extra-illustrate  some  inane 
book  of  polemics  or  proverbs. 

Nicholas  Ferrar,  who  kept  the  '  Protestant 
Nunnery '  at  Little  Gidding,  in  Huntingdonshire, 
was,  I  believe,  the  inventor  of  a  system  which 
was  not  fully  developed  until  the  publication  of 
Granger's  '  Biographical  History  of  England,' 
but  which  is,  nevertheless,  directly  or  indirectly 
responsible  for  the  condition  of  most  of  the  im- 
perfect volumes  which  are  met  with  at  every  turn. 


96     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

The  story  of  Nicholas  Ferrar,  assuming  it  to  be 
true,  which  there  is  little  reason  to  doubt,  makes 
it  clear  that  King  Charles  I.  was  as  bad  as 
or  worse  than  anybody  in  this  matter,  for,  had 
he  not  affected  to  admire  the  handiwork  of  this 
first  and  chief  of  sinners,  the  baneful  practice  of 
mutilating  books  for  the  sake  of  their  illustrations, 
title-pages,  or  frontispieces,  might  never  have 
become  an  aristocratic  amusement,  sanctified  by 
tradition,  and  ennobled  far  beyond  its  deserts 
by  kingly  patronage.  The  Concordance  which 
Ferrar  showed  the  King  escaped  the  wrath  of  the 
fanatic  Hugh  Peters  and  his  crew,  and,  after 
many  vicissitudes,  is  now  safely  lodged  in  the 
British  Museum,  a  warning  to  all  who  may  at  any 
time  seek  to  revive  a  practice  which  would,  in 
these  days  of  emulation  and  competition,  burn 
with  a  white  heat. 

In  Wordsworth's  *  Ecclesiastical  Biography ' 
the  story  of  Nicholas  Ferrar  is  set  out  at  length. 
There  is  no  need  to  enter  into  minute  details,  as 
the  tale  has  since  become  stereotyped,  and  is 
found  reproduced  in  a  dozen  different  places  at 
least.  Shortly,  it  appears  that  in  June,  1634, 
King  Charles  I.  was  staying  with  the  Earl  of 
Westmorland  at  Apethorpe,  and  from  thence  sent 
one  of  his  gentlemen  to  the  home  of  Nicholas 
Ferrar,  hard  by,  to  '  intreat '  a  sight  of  a  Con- 
cordance which  he  had  heard  had  recently  been 
completed.  When  Ferrar  was  on  the  Continent 
some  time  previously,  he  had  bought  up  a  great 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters  97 

number  of  prints  by  the  best  masters,  illustrative 
of  historical  passages  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments, and  these  he  afterwards  used  for  ornament- 
ing various  compilations  of  the  Scriptures,  among 
them  a  '  full  harmony  or  concordance  of  the  four 
Evangelists,  adorned  with  many  beautiful  pictures, 
which  required  more  than  a  year  for  the  composi- 
tion, and  was  divided  into  150  heads  or  chapters.' 

This  was  the  Concordance  that  King  Charles 
was  so  anxious  to  look  at,  and  which,  indeed,  he 
admired  so  much  that  he  never  rested  until  he 
had  obtained  one  like  it  for  his  own  library.  Both 
books  are  now  in  the  British  Museum,  the  original 
having  been  acquired  about  three  years  ago,  and 
the  one  in  the  King's  Library  from  George  II., 
who  had  inherited  the  royal  collection  of  books 
and  manuscripts. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  Nicholas  Ferrar, 
there  was  certainly  no  harm  in  this  process  of 
extra-illustrating.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  he  had  gone  about  tearing  out  plates  from 
books,  or  done  anything  else  which  in  any  respect, 
save  one,  could  be  regarded  as  objectionable  in 
the  slightest  degree.  There  was,  and  is,  however, 
one  objection  to  his  procedure,  namely,  the  very 
bad  example  he  set  to  unscrupulous  people  who, 
in  after  years,  rose  up  in  their  thousands  and 
commenced  to  rip  and  tear  with  diabolical 
enterprise.  These  were  the  days  of  Granger's 
'  Biographical  History  of  England  ' — hence  the 
verb  to  Grangerize — when  people  went  about 

7 


98     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

searching  for  portraits  of  celebrities  mentioned 
in  the  text  to  paste  between  the  leaves  in  their 
proper  places.  If  Granger  incidentally  mentioned 
that  someone  had  been  conveyed  to  the  Tower, 
and  subsequently  had  the  good  fortune  to  escape 
out  of  a  certain  window,  books  would  be  ran- 
sacked and  mutilated  to  provide  illustrations  of 
(i)  the  Tower  of  London  from  the  .N.,  S.,  E.  or 
W.,  as  the  case  might  be ;  (2)  portrait  of  the 
prisoner ;  (3)  view  of  the  window  from  which  he 
let  himself  down  ;  and  finally,  if,  Laus  Deo,  a 
letter  in  his  handwriting  or  a  section  of  the  rope 
which  had  made  his  escape  possible  could  only 
be  unearthed,  great  was  the  joy  in  the  camp  of 
the  Philistine. 

This  mania  for  Grangerizing  grew  till  it 
assumed  enormous  proportions.  One  enthusiast 
tried  to  illustrate  Rees'  '  Cyclopaedia,'  but  died 
before  he  had  accomplished  very  much  in  com- 
parison with  what  remained  to  be  done.  Mr. 
Crowle's  copy  of  Pennant's  *  History  of  London  ' 
cost  that  gentleman  £7,000  from  first  to  last,  and 
there  is  a  book  of  this  kind  in  the  Bodleian  which 
has  engulfed  nearly  double  that  amount.  It  con- 
sists of  Clarendon's  'History  of  the  Rebellion,' 
swollen  to  sixty-seven  large  volumes,  repre- 
senting forty  years  of  intense  application.  The 
vagaries  of  a  whole  army  of  book-collectors  are 
reflected  from  every  page  of  works  such  as  these, 
for  a  man  must  necessarily  be  a  book-collector 
first,  and  a  Grangerizer  after,  else  would  material 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters  99 

fail  him.  Happily  for  the  peace  of  books,  the 
mania  for  extra-illustrating  has  practically  died 
out.  The  expense  is  too  great,  life  too  short,  the 
knowledge  and  taste — of  a  kind — too  laborious  to 
acquire,  to  endow  this  pastime  with  a  permanent 
and  stable  interest. 

And  yet  there  is  another  vagary,  eccentricity, 
freak,  or  what  you  will,  which,  for  cool,  deliberate 
folly,  has  never  been  equalled  even  among  Ferrar's 
admirers.  The  fun  in  this  case  consists  in  wilfully 
destroying  a  certain  number  of  scarce  and  valuable 
books  in  order  to  heighten  the  importance  and 
value  of  the  survivors.  Three  or  four  collectors 
whose  tastes  are  similar — that  is  to  say,  who 
accumulate  works  by  the  same  author — will  take 
stock  of  their  belongings.  Thanks  to  the 
Grangerizers,  a  portrait  will  perhaps  be  missing 
from  one  volume,  and  a  plate  from  another; 
some  disciple  of  an  ancient  Goth  may  have 
removed  a  title-page  or  two ;  one  copy  may  be 
fairer  to  look  upon  than  another ;  a  leaf  or  two 
may  be  injured  which  in  another  copy,  imperfect 
perhaps  in  other  respects,  may  be  above  sus- 
picion. Our  collectors  have  duplicates,  for  they 
have  been  striving  all  their  lives  to  prevent 
anyone  else  from  obtaining  any  copy,  good,  bad, 
or  indifferent,  of  the  scarcest  works  of  the  author 
or  authors  they  think  they  honour  by  their  notice. 
They  make  a  '  pool '  of  all  the  volumes  which  are 
not  immaculate ;  complete  or  perfect  as  many  of 
them  as  possible,  apportion  them,  and  destroy  the 

7—2 


ioo  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

remainder.  They  will  burn  a  work  which  is 
perfect,  provided  each  has  a  copy  in  better  con- 
dition, and  this  is  to  prevent  you  or  me,  or 
anyone  else,  from  sharing  in  their  sacrilegious 
joy.  When  we  reflect  that,  from  the  nature  of 
things,  it  is  only  the  scarcest  books  that  can  be 
so  treated  with  effect,  we  shall  begin  to  realize  the 
sinister  importance  of  the  act.  Practices  such  as 
these  are  the  product  of  the  present  age;  they 
are  not  common,  far  from  it,  but  they  are  not 
unusual.  And  yet  the  perpetrators  mean  no 
harm,  for,  as  they  would  very  truly  say,  if  their 
practices  were  generally  known  and  complaint 
were  made,  '  You  can,  if  you  like,  read  So-and-so 
without  the  least  difficulty,  for  his  works  have 
been  reprinted  many  times,  and  it  is  not  either 
essential  or  advisable  that  the  very  scarcest 
edition  of  all  should  be  in  your  hands.'  There 
is  in  this  argument  a  little  logical  force,  but  no 
decency  for  anyone  to  dissect. 

Bookmen  of  the  present  day,  or  at  least  those 
among  them  who  aspire  to  the  highest  seats  in 
the  collectors'  Pantheon,  are  invariably  bound  by 
rule,  and  it  is  this  hard  and  fast  bondage  that 
makes  them  do  things  which,  if  left  to  themselves, 
they  would  probably  be  the  first  to  deprecate. 
To  accumulate  any  considerable  number  of  really 
scarce  books  is  the  labour  of  a  lifetime,  and  to 
obtain  immaculate  copies  necessitates  not  merely 
the  possession  of  plenty  of  money,  but  a  very 
great  deal  of  energy,  discrimination,  and  tact.. 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          101 

The  old  school  of  general  lovers  is  dying  out. 
People  now  very  seldom  buy  up  whole  libraries, 
or  send  out  colossal  orders  to  gratify  a  mere  love 
of  possession.  They  work  by  the  book  of  arith- 
metic, cautiously,  slowly,  and  with  one  main 
object  ever  in  view.  In  this  they  are  right,  but  in 
this  also  they  fail,  a  paradox  which  is  no  paradox 
at  all  when  it  is  remembered  that  book-hunters 
are  of  many  kinds  and  of  varying  degrees  of 
intelligence. 

For  instance,  though  there  is  undoubtedly 
something  unique  and  strange  about  the  very  ap- 
pearance of  a  library  of  extremely  diminutive 
books,  the  collector  of  works  of  this  kind  is 
'  cabin'd,  cribb'd,  confin'd/  within  the  compass  of 
about  two  square  inches  at  the  most,  and  probably 
does  not  expect  to  derive  either  instruction  or 
amusement  from  their  pages  when  he  has 
succeeded  in  reading  them  with  the  aid  of  a 
microscope.  His  rule  is  inflexible.  Shakespeare 
in  folio  must  give  place  to  '  The  Mite ' ;  '  The 
English  Bijou  Almanac '  for  1837  1S>  m  his  eyes, 
one  of  the  choicest  of  all  volumes.  Here  litera- 
ture and  the  rule  are  in  conflict,  and  books  be- 
come bric-a-brac,  as  they  must  do  when  any  rule 
is  too  rigidly  applied  to  them.  Yet  there  are 
many  collectors  of  small  books  both  here  and 
abroad,  and  prices  rule  inordinately  high  in  con- 
sequence. 

Very  probably  '  The  Mite  '  is  the  smallest  book 
printed  from  movable  type  in  the  world.  Its 


102  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

size  is  only  f  in.  by  f  in.,  and  it  would  certainly 
be  an  exceedingly  difficult  matter  to  reduce  this 
measurement.  If  anybody  could  do  so,  it  would 
be  M.  Salomon  of  Paris,  who  has  long  been  a 
collector  of  these  microscopical  curiosities,  or  the 
trustees  of  the  British  Museum,  who  have  a  box 
full  of  them.  In  1781  a  little  book  called  the 
'  Alarm  Almanac  '  made  its  appearance  in  Paris, 
and  though  printed  with  movable  type  and  not 
engraved,  like  nearly  all  these  little  works  are, 
measured  only  19  millimetres  by  14.  There  are 
very  nearly  25^  millimetres  to  the  inch,  and  this 
specimen  consequently  runs  '  The  Mite  '  very  close 
indeed.  The  '  English  Bijou  Almanac  '  for  1837, 
however,  completely  eclipses  both,  but  unfortu- 
nately it  is  engraved  and  not  printed  from  type. 
This  book  measures  f  in.  in  height,  J  in.  wide, 
and  ^  in.  in  thickness.  The  authoress  was 
'  L.E.L.,'  Letitia  Elizabeth  Landon,  an  almost 
forgotten  poetess,  whose  sad  marriage  and  un- 
timely death  are  known  to  only  a  few  students  of 
Victorian  literature.  Some  of  her  poems  were 
printed  in  the  '  Bijou '  for  the  first  and  only  time, 
so  that  this  tiny  volume  is  of  some  literary  im- 
portance. Its  title  is  so  minute  that  a  magni- 
fying glass  is  necessary  to  read  it.  Its  thirty-seven 
leaves  are  devoted,  inter  alia,  to  several  pages  of 
music  and  some  portraits,  including  one  of  James 
Fenimore  Cooper,  the  novelist.  Even  small 
books  have  a  history  and  an  importance  of 
their  own,  but  to  collect  them  to  the  exclusion 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          103 

of   every   other    book    is    surely    a    pronounced 
'  vagary.' 

M.  Salomon  has  more  than  200  specimens,  but 
then  he  does  not  absolutely  confine  his  attention 
to  midgets.  I  never  knew  nor  heard  of  more 
than  one  collector  who  was  so  infatuated  as  to  do 
so,  and  he  had  forty-five  volumes  of  the  kind,  all 
different,  in  which  he  took  such  extreme  delight 
that  he  was  ever  on  the  look  out  for  more. 

Another  collector  with  whom  I  am  personally 
acquainted  has  read  this  chapter  through  at  my 
express  request,  and  consequently  cannot  reason- 
ably say  that  I  have  endeavoured  to  question  the 
soundness  of  his  discretion  behind  his  back.  He 
accumulates  books  with  a  history.  If  a  book  has 
no  history,  he  will  have  none  of  it.  In  his  library 
are  many  volumes  which  I  must  confess  I  have 
a  great  regard  for,  but  which  I  know  can  never 
be  mine,  for  each  is  unique,  and  the  whole  col- 
lection is  destined  for  a  public  museum  in  the 
end. 

He  has  a  book  bound  in  what  looks  like  dry 
and  hard  parchment,  warped  with  damp,  and 
stained  here  and  there  with  reddish  brown.  It 
is  a  copy  of  Johnson's  '  Lives  and  Adventures  of 
the  most  Famous  Highwaymen,  Murderers,  and 
Street  Robbers,  etc.,'  printed  in  folio  in  1736,  a 
scarce  book  at  any  time,  but  under  existing 
circumstances  past  praying  for.  The  parchment 
is  human  cuticle,  stripped  from  the  back  of  a 
criminal  who  had  swung  at  Tyburn  for  a  series 


104  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

of  atrocious  butcheries,  which  are  chronicled  with 
considerable  minuteness  in  the  pages  of  the  '  New- 
gate Calendar.'  When  the  corpse  was  cut  down 
it  was,  according  to  the  custom  then  prevailing, 
carted  '  home,'  and  exhibited  to  gaping  crowds 
at  so  much  a  head,  and  finally  sold  to  the  surgeons. 
From  them  a  prior  owner  of  this  delightful  volume 
obtained  the  skin,  which,  when  tanned,  formed 
an  appropriate  and  never-to-be-forgotten  binding, 
to  all  appearances  sweating  great  smears  of  blood. 
It  is  only  the  damp,  of  course,  or  perhaps  some 
defect  in  the  curing  process,  which  is  responsible 
for  these  blemishes ;  but  they  seem  to  cry  for 
vengeance,  still  greater  and  greater  vengeance, 
against  an  inhuman  wretch  long  since  departed 
more  or  less  in  peace. 

This  is  the  only  gruesome  thing  in  the  library, 
and  I  know  as  a  fact  that  it  excites  more  interest 
than  all  the  rest  of  the  books  put  together,  though 
many,  not  to  say  most,  of  them  are  distinctly 
worthy  of  the  closest  attention.  One  volume 
belonged  to  Charles  Lamb,  who  has  made  a  per- 
fect wreck  of  it,  and  half  a  dozen  or  more  have 
the  signature  of  '  Will  Shakespere  '  scribbled  in 
an  Elizabethan  hand  on  the  title-pages,  and  in 
all  sorts  of  places.  These  were  once  among  the 
choicest  possessions  of  Samuel  Ireland,  of  Nor- 
folk Street,  Strand,  the  father  of  William  Henry 
Ireland,  a  liar  and  a  solicitor's  clerk,  who,  as  all 
the  world  knows,  was  for  a  time,  and  in  very 
truth,  mistaken  for  the  great  dramatist  himself. 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          105 

Then  there  are  books  with  inscriptions,  un- 
doubtedly genuine,  of  Bradshaw  the  regicide, 
Algernon  Sidney,  and  many  other  persons  of  the 
highest  political  eminence  in  their  day ;  books, 
too,  which  have  belonged  to  Young  the  poet — dis- 
tinguishable at  a  glance  by  the  multitude  of  turned- 
down  leaves — and  the  unfortunate  Louis  XVI. 

This  library  is,  of  its  kind,  perhaps  as  im- 
portant as  any  that  has  ever  been  formed,  and 
yet  it  only  numbers  some  250  volumes,  so 
supremely  difficult  is  it,  as  a  rule,  to  trace  the 
possession  even  of  books  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion or  two.  Great  men  have  ever  been  chary 
of  their  names,  or  at  least  it  would  seem  so  from 
the  number  of  unimportant  signatures  and  in- 
scriptions we  meet  with  day  by  day. 

A  long  and  very  interesting  chapter  might  be 
written  on  '  Inscriptions  in  Books,'  and  it  must  be 
confessed  that  a  really  important  signature  or  com- 
ment adds  so  very  appreciably  to  the  sentimental 
value  of  the  volume  in  which  it  is  found,  that  it  is 
not  surprising  that  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  conjured 
up  a  pleasant  train  of  reflection,  in  his  inimitable 
style,  based  upon  the  name  of  a  former  owner 
of  his  own  copy  of  the  '  Colloquies  of  Erasmus/ 
which,  by  the  way,  my  friend  is  extremely  anxious 
to  possess  himself  of,  but  will  probably  never 
obtain.  In  this  instance  the  personality  of  the 
'  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table '  obscures  all 
else,  and  gives  the  book  a  distinct  history  of  its 
own — a  history  that  invests  it  with  an  importance 


io6  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

and  value  it  could  never  claim  of  itself.  To  find 
out  all  we  can  about  the  former  owners  of  books 
which  we  ourselves  take  pleasure  in  is  no  frivolous 
task,  and  the  pity  is  that  our  opportunities  for 
doing  so  are  limited.  The  book-plate  has  very 
nearly  put  an  end  to  owner's  autographs,  and 
being  easy  to  remove,  affords  little  or  no  guarantee 
of  ownership.  And  book-plates  have  been  in  use 
in  this  country  for  more  than  200  years. 

No  doubt  everyone  who  has  anything  to  do 
with  books,  whether  as  writer,  producer,  or  col- 
lector, can  call  to  mind  the  eccentricities  of  his 
neighbours  with  regard  to  them.  I  call  it  extremely 
eccentric  conduct  on  the  part  of  any  man  to  per- 
sist in  collecting  odd  volumes,  and  to  studiously 
ignore  complete  sets.  Yet  I  knew  an  old  gentle- 
man— now  dead,  and  his  books  littering  the  stalls 
of  Farringdon  Street  and  elsewhere — who  did 
this,  year  after  year,  and  for  many  years,  with  the 
inevitable  result.  He  was  fond  of  literature,  and 
the  pleasure  he  derived  in  reading  was  part  and 
parcel  of  his  existence. 

It  was  an  axiom  with  him,  however,  that  any- 
thing which  is  worth  having,  and  any  knowledge 
worth  acquiring,  must  be  laboriously  worked  for ; 
and  he  would  instance  numerous  authorities  who 
have  taught  this  truth  by  example  as  well  as  by 
precept.  He  would  say,  '  If  I  go  out  and  buy  a 
Bible  for  £500,  because  it  is  old  and  scarce,  do 
you  think  I  shall  derive  as  much  benefit  and 
solace  from  its  pages  as  if  I  had  invested  a  trifle 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          1 07 

with  the  fixed  determination  to  read  what  I  had 
acquired  and  to  follow  its  teachings  ?' 

'  No,  certainly  not,'  is  the  obvious  and  truthful 
reply  to  that ;  but  this  would  appear  to  be  different 
from  buying  one  volume  of,  say,  Pope's  works 
when  there  ought  to  be  twenty,  and  trusting  to 
enterprise  not  unmingled  with  luck  to  discover 
the  remaining  nineteen.  To  this,  however,  he 
would  not  agree,  and,  to  do  him  justice,  he  did 
not  preach  one  thing  and  perform  another.  His 
theory  was  that,  if  the  perusal  of  an  odd  volume 
leads  the  reader  to  long  for  the  possession  of 
its  fellows,  it  is  better  that  he  should  search 
for  them  until  he  finds  them,  than  that  he 
should  have  them  to  his  hand,  as  it  were,  ready 
made. 

Carlyle  intimated  that  a  man  had  far  better  study 
the  title-page  of  any  book  worth  the  trouble  of  look- 
ing at  than  read  the  whole  text  with  a  vacant  mind, 
and  no  doubt  he  was  right,  though  this,  too,  seems 
to  be  an  entirely  distinct  matter  from  the  general 
principle  that  nothing  can  be  learned  without  a 
maximum  of  inconvenience.  Such  a  conclusion 
is  rather  a  straining  of  the  position  insisted  upon 
by  Nero's  tutor,  that  no  one  should  collect  more 
books  than  he  can  read,  and  that  a  multitude  of 
books  only  distracts  the  mind.  Therefore  was  it 
that  Francis  Bissari  in  the  year  1750  designed  a 
plate,  which  he  pasted  in  the  few  volumes  he 
possessed,  and  which  consequently  is  now  ex- 
tremely scarce.  *  Ex  -  Libris  civis  Francisci 


io8  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

Bissari,'  he  says,  '  Distrahit  animum  librorum 
multitude,  itaque  cum  legere  non  possis  quantum 
habueris,  sat  est  habere  quantum  legas.  Seneca. 
Ep.  2.' 

Still,  as  I  have  intimated,  the  old  gentleman 
had  his  way  and  his  day,  and  when  he  died  his 
books  were  all  despatched  to  the  auction  rooms. 
It  took  three  men  more  than  a  week  to  pack  them 
in  boxes.  There  were  books  under  every  bed  in 
the  house,  and  every  nook  and  cranny  was  full  of 
them.  There  were,  altogether,  many  thousands 
of  volumes,  and  nearly  all  were  odd.  If  a  series 
were  found  to  be  complete,  as  sometimes  hap- 
pened, it  was  sure  to  be  made  up  of  volumes 
belonging  to  different  editions,  and,  naturally 
enough,  in  different  bindings.  The  auctioneers 
did  what  they  could,  and  sold  the  vast  majority 
in  '  parcels '  for  a  mere  song,  which  in  truth  was 
all  they  were  worth. 

This  peculiar  form  of  book-collecting,  though 
apparently  strange,  is,  and  always  has  been,  very 
usual,  for  the  vast  majority  of  readers  are  poor. 
One  volume  will  cost  less,  proportionately,  than 
the  complete  set  of  which  it  forms  part ;  and, 
moreover,  we  are  again  face  to  face  with  the 
argument  that  it  is  better  to  master  the  contents 
of  one  volume  than  to  have  a  mere  superficial 
knowledge  of  a  dozen  or  more.  The  only  thing  is 
that,  as  the  world  wags  at  present,  the  advice  is 
erratic,  and  the  system  of  buying  b6oks  in  sections 
one  that  cannot  be  recommended.  If  we  could  be 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          109 

sure  of  a  hundred  years  of  life,  then  things  might 
be  different.     Sed  Ars  longa,  vita  brevis  est. 

And  so  it  happens  that  the  vagaries  of  book- 
hunters  are  often  passing  strange.  Some,  like 
Sir  Thomas  Phillipps,  will  buy  largely,  and  never 
even  open  the  cases  in  which  they  arrive.  Others 
will  hide  them  in  all  sorts  of  out-of-the-way 
places,  while  others  again  will  cut  them  to  pieces, 
or  in  some  other  way  destroy  them  utterly.  It 
is  the  most  usual  thing,  for  me,  at  any  rate,  and 
therefore  presumably  for  others  who  are  known 
to  write  about  books,  or  to  give  the  reports  of  the 
auction-rooms,  to  receive  a  bundle  of  title-pages 
as  samples  of  the  volumes  to  which  they  belong, 
with  a  request  for  information  as  to  how  they 
ought  to  be  bound,  and  what  they  are  worth. 
Some  collectors — real  bond-fide  collectors  these— 
start  life  with  strong  opinions  as  to  the  usefulness 
of  books,  and,  after  the  manner  of  Grolier,  though 
without  his  discretion,  open  their  doors  to  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men,  only  to  close  them  later 
with  a  firm  resolve  that,  come  what  come  may, 
they  will  never  again  allow  any  friend  whomsoever 
even  to  gaze  upon  their  store.  Some,  too,  are  so 
deeply  immersed  in  their  all-absorbing  hobby  that 
they  have  no  clear  conception  of  the  difference 
between  meum  and  tuum.  Estimable  in  every 
respect  but  one,  and  scrupulously  honest  to  a 
degree  in  all  matters  of  daily  intercourse,  they  yet 
fail  in  this  one'  supreme  trial.  And  yet  they  are 
absolved ;  for  these  unfortunates  are  not  thieves 


1 1  o  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

but  eccentrics,  who  would  no  more  think  of 
selling  the  objects  they  have  mistaken  for  their 
own,  than  they  would  of  getting  wealth  by  false 
pretences.  Pope  Innocent  X.,  when  still  Mon- 
signor  Pamphilio,  was  found  in  the  possession  of 
a  book  he  could  not  satisfactorily  account  for,  and 
the  ludicrous  part  of  the  matter  was  that  Du 
Moustier,  who  claimed  that  it  had  been  abstracted 
from  his  library,  was  subsequently  proved  to  have 
stolen  it  himself.  Then,  again,  Catherine  de 
Medici  sequestered  the  entire  library  of  Marshal 
Strozzi,  and  on  complaint  promised  to  pay  for  it 
by  instalments,  which,  of  course,  she  never  did. 
Hearne  hints  more  than  once  that  Sir  Thomas 
Bodley  was  eccentric,  and  when  Moore,  Bishop 
of  Ely,  and  father  of  English  Black-Letter  Col- 
lectors, went  to  dine  with  a  bibliophile,  as  was 
his  wont,  the  latter  would,  if  he  were  wise,  spend 
the  morning  in  removing  out  of  sight,  and,  there- 
fore, out  of  temptation's  way,  the  choicest  of  his 
possessions.  But  the  king  of  all  these  suspicious 
characters  was  Libri,  who,  as  Inspector-General 
of  French  Libraries,  under  Louis  Philippe,  pre- 
sented himself,  from  first  to  last,  with  books  of 
the  value  of  more  than  £20,000,  among  them  a 
fine  MS.  of  the  Pentateuch,  which  he  sold  to  the 
late  Lord  Ashburnham  on  condition  that  it  was 
not  to  be  published  for  twenty  years.  In  1868 
the  time  expired,  and  then  the  matter  was  traced 
home,  to  his  memory's  shame. 

This  conduct  of  Libri  in  selling  what  did  not 


Vagaries  of  Book-hunters          1 1 1 

belong  to  him  puts  him,  indeed,  on  a  level,  in 
point  of  turpitude,  with  the  young  divinity  student 
of  Chicago  commonly  called  '  The  Champion 
Biblioklept  of  America.'  In  vastness  of  concep- 
tion the  latter  was  a  mere  tyro,  for  he  only  stole 
a  few  hundred  books  of  small  value  from  the 
Chicago  Public  Library.  The  motive  of  both 
men  was,  however,  the  same,  and  it  was  that 
which,  according  to  some  consciences,  made 
them  thieves.  After  all,  it  is  this  motive  that 
must  be  primarily  considered  in  all  ethical  ques- 
tions such  as  those  which  underlie,  to  some 
extent  at  least,  the  vagaries  of  every  book-hunter 
who  ever  was  born  to  hunger  and  thirst  for 
Caxton's  types,  and  paper  white  as  snow,  bound 
in  a  dream  by  the  Gascon's  magic  touch. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

HOW   FASHION   LIVES. 

r  I  "'HE  dim  haze  which,  in  the  imagination  of 
the  populace,  once  floated  above  the  head 
of  every  hungry  book-man,  was  never  in 
those  days  identified  with  a  mass  of  tangled, 
waving  hair,  which,  aureola-like,  '  girt  his  occiput 
about,'  for  he  was  no  minor  poet,  with  pale,  eager 
face  and  love-locks  everywhere,  but  a  man,  with 
a  rugged  front  such  as  Ben  Jonson  wore,  and 
a  heart  that  beat  within.  The  haze  in  which 
he  moved  was  from  the  dust  of  old-world  tomes  ; 
it  settled  on  his  coat,  and,  had  he  worn  a  bob-wig, 
it  would  have  settled  on  that  also,  but,  since  wigs 
had  escaped  the  fashion  of  fifty  years  before,  it 
merely  clung  to  his  hair  instead,  and  powdered  it 
gray  before  its  time.  Half  a  century  ago  the 
England  which  for  the  most  part  was  free  from 
the  shriek  of  the  railway-whistle  and  the  rumble 
of  traffic  harboured  such  men  as  these  in  their 
hundreds.  They  came  from  the  last  century, 
and  the  further  their  pilgrimage  in  this  the  more 
they  haunted  the  rustic  element  in  which  they 


How  Fashion  Lives  113 

moved.  They  were,  in  their  way,  magicians, 
wearing  the  consecrated  pentacles  of  Agrippa, 
'  that  man  of  parts,  who  dived  into  the  secrets  of 
all  arts,  that  second  Solomon,  the  mighty  Hee, 
that  try'de  them  all,  and  found  them  Vanity/ 

Naturally  enough,  when  one  of  these  old-time 
bookworms  left  his  seclusion  to  mix  with  the 
whirl  and  throng  $«f  the  London  thoroughfares,  he 
was  swallowed  up,  as  though  he  had  never  been, 
in  a  huge  vortex  of  unappreciative  apathy,  for  the 
man  in  the  street  never  has  time  to  dream,  and 
such  books  as  he  affects  are  ledgers.  But  he 
might  have  strayed  into  some  square  which  the 
tide,  ebbing  westward,  had  left  desolate,  and  met 
his  counterpart  sitting,  as  he  himself  did  when  at 
home,  in  the  midst  of  vellum-bound  classics  far 
into  the  night.  Indeed,  when  he  came  to  London, 
which  was  but  seldom,  it  would  be  to  visit  another 
bookworm,  just  as  the  stage-doorkeeper  of  the 
present  day  spends  his  evening  off  at  the  entrance 
to  another  theatre,  because  he  cannot  get  away, 
even  in  spirit,  from  his  life's  work  and  enterprise. 
Were  we  to  look  for  these  old  book-men  now,  we 
should  look  in  vain,  for  the  century  is  fast  drawing 
to  its  close,  and  a  younger  generation  has  occupied 
their  seats. 

The  transition  from  the  old  to  the  new  in  the 
matter  of  books  and  all  that  pertains  to  them,  has 
been  very  gradual.  It  commenced  about  fifty 
years  ago,  or  a  little  earlier,  and  was  due,  per- 
haps, to  the  spirit  of  unrest  fostered  by  an  im- 

8 


1 14    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

proved  and  quicker  system  of  communication  in  a 
country  of  very  small  area,  absolutely  incapable 
of  enlargement.  We  see  a  mighty  change  in 
everything  external,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
our  social  habits  should  have  experienced  a 
revolution.  Round  goes  the  wheel,  slowly  and 
persistently,  and  we  go  with  it,  though  daily 
custom  and  daily  experience  has  a  tendency 
to  mask  its  motion.  One  day,  sooner  or  later, 
we  start  up  and  look  for  the  familiar  land- 
marks. They  are  gone.  New  ones,  not  at 
all  familiar,  but  still  recognisable,  have  taken 
their  place,  and  then  we  know  that  time  has 
slipped  away  while  we  were  dreaming,  and  that 
nothing  can  possibly  be  done  but  to  take  the 
future  by  the  forelock,  and  to  rush  on  for  a  brief 
space  with  the  rest. 

And  so  it  is  with  books,  and  ever  has  been. 
Fifty  years  and  more  ago,  time  waited  upon  them 
and  stood  still;  now  they  are  carried  along  un- 
ceasingly, and  have  no  rest.  Every  year  the 
speed  increases.  Old  companions  of  the  shelf  are 
whirled  into  space  and  parted  for  ever ;  the  very 
men  who  buy  them  are  changed  in  their  aspira- 
tions, their  tastes,  and  their  desires,  and  in  a  very 
short  time  they  will  change  again,  and  yet  again. 
They  are  swayed  and  driven  by  Fashion,  and  this 
is  how  Fashion  lives. 

There  was  something  about  the  dry -as -dust 
bookworm  which,  however  consonant  with  anti- 
quated modes  of  thought  and  action,  was  never- 


How  Fashion  Lives  115 

theless  felt  to  be  utterly  unsuitable  to  changed 
conditions.  Men  must  and  will  read,  and  to 
accumulate  is  equally  natural.  A  life  of  easy 
contentment  engenders  one  mode  of  thought,  a 
life  of  enterprise  another ;  and  the  transition  from 
the  narrow  limits  of  a  prison-bound  study  to 
the  open  air  is  precisely  what  might  have  been 
expected  to  occur. 

Men  there  were,  as  I  have  said,  in  plenty,  who 
refused  to  quit  the  time-honoured  traditions  of 
their  race ;  but  on  every  side  of  them  were  being 
born  lighter  spirits,  to  whom  colossal  and  intricate 
volumes  were  as  heavy  as  lead.  We  see  the 
changed  nature  of  their  tastes  in  the  craving  for 
art,  and  the  outcome  of  it  in  scores  and  hundreds 
of  miscellanies  which  began  to  be  published  about 
the  year  1830,  and  held  imperial  sway  on  drawing- 
room  tables  for  ten  years  or  more. 

Fisher's  'Scrap -Book/  and  numerous  other 
artistically  got  up  volumes  full  of  excerpts  and 
elegant  extracts,  illustrated  by  some  of  the  first 
engravers  of  the  time,  were  extremely  fashion- 
able in  those  days,  and  for  light  and  casual 
reading  very  probably  supplied  all  that  was  neces- 
sary. The  poets,  from  the  Earl  of  Surrey  onward, 
were  served  up  in  dainty  plats,  and  the  best  prose 
authors  were  disembowelled  with  remarkable  skill. 
The  ingenious  Martin  Tupper,  observing  this 
transformation  scene,  brought  joy  into  many 
households  by  laying  down,  in  the  form  of  explicit 
statements,  matters  of  theological  controversy 

8-2 


1 1 6      The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

which  had  in  their  day  fed  the  Smithfield 
fires  till  they  roared  and  blazed  like  those  of 
Moloch. 

These  books  were  for  the  cultured,  to  whom 
the  random  books  of  Pierce  Egan  and  William 
Combe  were  positively  distasteful,  and  who, 
having  neither  the  time  nor  the  inclination 
to  bury  themselves  deeply  in  classic  lore,  eagerly 
welcomed  anything  which  appealed  to  their  better 
selves  and,  at  the  same  time,  did  not  too  severely 
tax  their  brains.  The  very  style  and  nature  of  the 
books  which  were  published  at  this  period  show 
as  conclusively  as  anything  can  do  the  great 
change  which  was  gradually  creeping  over  the 
public  mind. 

Smollett  and  Swift  were  becoming  coarse,  and 
Hogarth,  in  his  realm  of  art,  was  already  much 
worse.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Maturin 
stalked  like  a  couple  of  terrifying  ghosts  hung 
about  with  chains,  wailing  their  lost  home.  They 
invariably  spoke  of  haunted  caverns,  and  the  wind 
rumbling  itself  to  sleep  in  the  recesses  of  ruined 
chimneys.  Their  novels  were  the  delight  of  these 
same  dry-as-dusts,  to  whom  the  new  age  had  said 
farewell,  but  who,  in  their  impenetrable  fastnesses, 
still  revelled,  though  in  numbers  yearly  decreasing, 
in  '  The  Raven,'  with  its  soul-quaking  refrain,  in 
the  'Castle  of  Otranto,'  and  'The  Bravo  of  Venice/ 
Things  of  graver  mood  they  could  not  find  had 
they  searched  the  entire  catalogue  of  English  litera- 
ture, from  the  metrical  poems  of  Casdmon,  chanted 


How  Fashion  Lives  1 1 7 

to  the  winds  of  Whitby,  down  to  the  newest  poem 
or  novel. 

The  new  school  called  the  old  '  unhealthy,' 
that  being  a  not  inapt  adjective  with  which  to 
express  the  absence  of  brightness  and  chic,  qualities 
which  came,  as  everything  else  comes,  when 
called  for,  and  which  were  embodied  to  a  nicety 
in  '  Sketches  by  "  Boz," '  '  The  Pickwick  Papers,' 
and  later  on  in  'The  Yellowplush  Correspondence/ 
and  '  The  Paris  Sketch-Book.'  The  new  poetry 
was  represented  by  Tennyson,  Browning,  Long- 
fellow, and  many  more,  and  essays  of  better,  or, 
at  any  rate,  more  taking,  style  than  those  of  the 
Rev.  Vicessimus  Knox,  were  published  every  day, 
and  what  is  more  to  the  point,  extensively  read 
and  hoarded. 

Collections  which  had  their  beginnings  in 
materials  such  as  these  authors  afforded  were, 
and  necessarily  must  be,  totally  different  in  every 
possible  way  from  those  of  the  prior  century; 
this  we  find  to  be  the  case  on  looking  at  the 
catalogues  of  sales  by  auction  which  were  issued 
under  the  new  regime.  Fashion  had  indeed 
changed,  and  at  this  particular  period  Hakluyt 
and  Coryat,  to  say  nothing  of  curious  authors 
like  Brathwaite  and  Seller,  were  compara- 
tively neglected.  They  have  recovered  them- 
selves since,  because  a  revulsion  of  feeling  has 
taken  place  in  their  favour,  and  many  of  the 
old  books  which  were  of  immense  importance 
sixty  or  seventy  years  ago  are,  after  suffering  a 


1 1 8    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

period  of  neglect,  once  more  in  vogue,  and  can 
hardly  be  met  with  when  sought  after,  so  great  is 
the  demand  for  them.  That  is  the  case  now, 
but  there  is  a  wide  intervening  period  which 
needs  to  be  analyzed. 

In  my  opinion,  Dickens  among  novelists,  and 
Tennyson  among  poets,  had  the  greatest  amount 
of  influence  upon  modern  collectors  as  a  body. 
The  former  was  the  more  powerful  at  first,  since 
he  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  with  extremely 
talented  artists  like  George  Cruikshank,  Hablot 
Browne,  Seymour  and  Leech,  to  illustrate  his 
works.  Cruikshank  was  fresh  from  the  glories 
of '  Life  in  London,'  and  '  The  Life  of  Napoleon,' 
which  had  between  them  carried  his  name  far 
and  wide,  and  Browne  hit  off  the  meaning  of 
the  author  in  such  a  marvellous  way,  that  he 
may  almost  be  said  to  have  discovered  him. 
Seymour's  opportunities  were  few,  as  his  seven 
etchings  for  the  *  Pickwick  Papers  '  were  all  he 
ever  accomplished  for  Dickens  ;  but  these  were, 
in  their  way,  masterly,  and  no  doubt  contributed 
greatly  to  the  success  of  the  earlier  parts  in  which 
they  appeared. 

Slowly  but  surely  the  collectors  began  to  turn 
their  thoughts  to  the  new  author  and  the  artists 
who  were  assisting  him,  and  to  accumulate  the 
numbers  in  which  it  was  the  fashion  to  issue 
illustrated  novels  at  that  time.  We  often  see 
them  now,  almost  as  clean  and  fresh  as  when 
they  were  first  published,  showing  conclusively 


How  Fashion  Lives  119 

that  every  care  has  been  bestowed  upon  them. 
In  later  days,  up  to  within  a  year  or  two  in  fact, 
there  was  a  great  rush  for  any  books  or  parts  by 
popular  authors  containing  first-rate  illustrations. 
There  is  a  demand  for  them  now,  but  only  when 
their  condition  is  immaculate,  for  fashion  has 
recently  changed  in  a  marked  degree,  owing, 
perhaps,  to  the  number  of  rich  collectors,  who 
would  have  these  things  at  any  price,  and,  of 
course,  had  their  way  to  the  exclusion  of  the  vast 
majority  who  were  not  sufficiently  well  off  to 
compete  with  them.  And  this  fashion  was  the 
parent,  not  of  another  fashion,  but  of  a  craze, 
which  raged  for  two  years  or  more. 

The  years  1893  and  1894  I  take  to  be  those  in 
which  people,  despairing  of  obtaining  their  heart's 
desire,  turned  their  attention  to  what  were  known 
as  '  Limited  Editions,'  and  raged  furiously. 
Nothing  but  a  thorough  grasp  of  the  state  of 
the  book-market  at  the  time,  and  a  deep  insight 
into  human  nature,  could  have  hit  upon  the 

*  Limited  Edition  '  as  a  stop-gap,  and  those  who 
invented  it  are  entitled  to  every  credit  for  their 
enterprise.      The    apology   for    the    life   of   the 

*  Limited   Edition '  brought   to   its   logical   con- 
clusion  was   this  :    Times   have    changed,   and, 
moreover,  more  people  buy  books  than  formerly, 
whether  to  read  or  to  store,     ^ith  the  readers 
we  have  nothing  to  do,  except  incidentally;  but 
so  far  as  the  collectors  are  concerned,  it  is  obvious 
that  only  about  one  out  of  every  ten  can  afford 


1 20  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

to  pay  the  extremely  high  prices  demanded  for 
most  of  the  first  editions  of  the  authors  of  repute 
which  they  affect. 

Now  comes  the  point,  and  upon  this  the  whole 
argument  succeeds  or  fails.  Do  they  want  these 
coveted  books  to  read  or  to  accumulate  ?  If 
they  wish  to  read  them  they  can  do  so  at  any 
time,  for  there  are  more  editions  than  one  in  the 
majority  of  instances,  and  the  demand  for  the  later 
and  cheaper  ones  is  of  a  different  character  alto- 
gether; ergo,  they  really  want  them,  though  they 
would  perhaps  be  highly  indignant  if  we  said  so, 
to  possess  and  not  necessarily  to  read.  Let  us, 
therefore,  make  new  books  in  the  image  of  the 
old,  decorating  them  artistically,  and  printing  them 
in  the  best  possible  style.  Let  us  cut  down  the 
edition  to  a  very  small  number  of  copies,  in 
order  to  keep  it  out  of  the  hands  of  all  but  just 
enough  buyers  to  make  the  venture  pay  well,  and 
we  ought  to  succeed  in  establishing  a  furore  that 
will  continue  precisely  as  long  as  the  strenuous 
efforts  to  obtain  time-tried  poems  and  essays 
remain  futile  by  reason  of  their  cost. 

The  venture  was  purposely  confined  to  poems 
and  essays,  because  literary  wares  of  this  kind 
good  enough  for  the  purpose  could  be  bought  for 
next  to  nothing.  A  novel,  in  order  to  compete  on 
this  particular  ground  with  the  older  works  of 
Ainsworth,  Thackeray,  and  the  rest,  would  be 
costly  to  buy  in  manuscript,  and  difficult  as  well 
as  expensive  to  produce ;  and,  moreover,  novels 


How  Fashion  Lives  121 

never  pay  unless  they  are  sold  in  large  quantities. 
This  argument  was  sound  throughout,  and,  more- 
over, a  fresh  departure  of  some  kind  was  inevit- 
able, if  only  to  stem  the  tide  that  flowed  so 
aggressively  in  favour  of  the  rich.  The  venture 
succeeded,  for  almost  on  the  instant  the  collector, 
casting  a  lingering  look  behind  on  the  expensive 
works  for  which  he  craved,  turned  away  from 
them,  and  welcomed  the  'dainty  volumes  of 
delicious  verse '  which  came  tumbling  down  in 
almost  endless  variety.  There  was  a  scramble 
for  them  which  continued  exactly  as  long  as  had 
been  predicted,  namely,  until  the  prices  of  once 
coveted  books  began  to  fall,  and  then  the  '  Limited 
Editions '  fell  too,  and  the  craze  was  over,  for  the 
present  at  least. 

One  would  have  thought  that  the  direct  result 
of  this  procedure  would  have  been  a  fresh  rush 
to  former  fields,  but  the  fact  is  otherwise.  Original 
editions  of  the  works  of  older  poets  and  essayists  of 
the  highest  repute  are  still  as  costly  as  ever,  but 
the  general  ruck  have  fallen  in  the  market,  and 
remain  fallen  to  this  present  day.  More  than 
that,  the  '  Limited  Edition '  brought  within  reason- 
able access  innumerable  better  books,  now  become 
cheaper,  provided  they  are  not  in  the  very  finest 
condition. 

Just  at  the  moment  there  is  no  great  '  boom  ' 
observable  in  the  English  market,  no  great  craze 
for  books  of  a  certain  special  kind,  though  some, 
as  usual,  are  sought  for  unceasingly,  as,  for 


122    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

example,  many  of  those  older  works  of  English 
literature  which  were  seen  in  such  profusion  in 
the  collection  of  Mr.  Charles  B.  Foote,  dispersed 
in  New  York  at  the  beginning  of  1895. 

Whatever  hard  things  may  be  said  of  collectors, 
however  much  they  may  be  likened  to  literary 
jackdaws,  or  to  what  extent  their  tastes  may  be 
criticised  and  compared  with  those  of  other 
people,  they  have  a  virtue — and  a  great  one — one 
undisputed  virtue,  which,  like  charity,  covereth  a 
multitude  of  sins.  This  cardinal  virtue  is,  that 
now,  as  in  past  times,  their  primary  aim  is  to 
appraise  literature  at  its  true  worth,  and  to  make 
that  the  raison  d'etre  of  their  enterprise.  The 
inevitable  red  herring  may  lead  them,  for  the 
moment,  away  from  the  pleasant  places  they  have 
made  their  home,  but  it  has  never  yet  prevented 
their  return. 

And  this  home  is  among  time-tried  and  intrin- 
sically valuable  books,  and  not  among  those  which 
are  temporarily  in  vogue.  It  is  a  home  which 
existed  in  Greece,  and  in  Rome,  and  all  through 
the  so-called  Dark  Ages,  during  the  Renaissance, 
and  down  the  centuries  which  succeeded,  right 
to  this  present  year  of  grace — a  home  furnished 
with  genius  and  perfumed  with  sentiment. 
Look  there  at  Paul  Lacroix  snatching  from  a 
Paris  stall  the  very  copy  of  '  Le  Tartuffe  '  which 
had  belonged  to  King  Louis  XIV.,  and  later  on 
sheltering  not  merely  the  great  Pixere"court, 
founder  of  the  Societe  des  Bibliophiles  Fran9ais, 


How  Fashion  Lives  123 

but  his  whole  library  as  well,  until  such  time  as 
his  creditors  had  drawn  off  their  legions  and 
departed.  Sentiment,  as  well  as  a  passion  for 
literature,  was  at  the  bottom  of  these  acts,  for 
that  very  copy  of  '  Le  Tartuffe  '  had  been  in 
Moliere's  coat-pocket,  and  Pixenfcourt  had  a  tale 
to  tell  of  every  scholarly  volume  he  possessed. 
You  cannot  manufacture  genuine  sentiment,  nor 
is  the  quality  to  be  evolved  from  anything  except 
genius. 

Accordingly,  we  find  that  every  book  which 
excites  the  cupidity  of  the  true  bibliophile  derives 
its  magic  power  primarily  from  within,  and  that 
this  power  is  often  materially  increased  by  reason 
of  extraneous  considerations.  The  instances  in 
which  external  matters  have  at  any  time  been 
capable  of  investing  an  inferior  book  with  a  halo 
of  importance  or  romance  are  so  extremely  rare 
that  they  might  almost  be  counted  on  the  fingers. 
A  mere  fleeting  craze  cannot  do  it,  and  it  is  the 
greatest  mistake  in  the  world  to  suppose  that  a 
scarce  book  would  be  sought  for,  and  prized  when 
found,  merely  because  it  is  scarce,  and  for  no 
other  reason.  As  every  book-collector  is  aware, 
there  are  hundreds  and  thousands  of  volumes 
lying  neglected  on  the  book-stalls  to-day  which 
would  never  be  there  if  this  were  not  so.  Some 
are  scarce  in  the  sense  of  being  difficult  to  meet 
with  when  wanted,  but,  if  that  be  their  only  merit, 
it  has  never  yet  been  acknowledged. 

But  fashion,  though  it  can  never  make  a  bad 


1 24  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

book  good,  has  the  power  to  subordinate  one 
good  book  to  another,  notwithstanding,  and  to 
play  shuttlecock  with  the  names  of  authors  and 
printers  alike.  It  was  fashion  in  excelsis  which 
lived  with  the  Elzevirs  when  men  were  saying  to 
one  another,  *  I  have  all  the  poets  they  ever 
printed.  I  have  ten  examples  of  every  volume, 
and  all  have  red  letters,  and  are  of  the  right  date.' 
It  was  fashion,  too,  which  assessed  the  value  of 
Longpierre's  copy  of  Montaigne's  '  Essais  '  (1659), 
with  the  buffalo's  head  on  the  preface  and  at  the 
commencement  of  each  chapter,  at  5,100  francs, 
and  only  the  other  day  (March  20,  1896)  flung 
away  a  fine  tall  copy,  bound  by  Bozerian,  for  the 
paltry  sum  of  £6  155. 

The  same  capricious  mistress  assessed  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh's  '  Discoverie  of  the  Large,  Rich 
and  Bewtiful  Empyre  of  Guiana,'  1626,  at  a  com- 
paratively low  rate — £3  35.,  if  the  late  Mr.  Henry 
Stevens  is  to  be  believed,  and  no  one  had  a  greater 
knowledge  of  such  books  than  he — in  1858,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  it  must  be  credited  to 
Shakespeare's  library,  as  the  '  still  vex'd  Ber- 
moothes,'  and  his  knowledge  of  the  breaking  of 
the  sea  on  the  rugged  rocks  by  which  the  Bermuda 
Islands  are  surrounded,  sufficiently  demonstrate. 
Thirty  years  ago  Smith's  '  Generall  Historic  of 
Virginia,'  published  for  M.  Sparkes  in  1625,  could 
have  been  got  for  a  twentieth  part  of  the  sum  that 
would  be  asked  for  it  now,  and  this  too  is  by 
Fashion's  decree. 


How  Fashion  Lives  125 

But  in  these  and  any  number  of  typical 
instances  there  is  no  change  in  the  estimation  in 
which  good  literature  is  held  ;  no  lifting  a  book 
from  an  abyss  of  mediocrity  and  placing  it  on 
a  pinnacle  of  fame.  Fashion  may  swing  men's 
minds  to  this  or  to  that,  and  so  indirectly  and  for 
the  time  being  cause  those  ups  and  downs  in 
the  book-market  which  are  the  despair  of  every- 
one who  has  endeavoured  to  account  for  them, 
but  further  than  this  she  cannot  go. 

And  therefore,  when  I  said  that  book-men  are 
swayed  by  fashion,  I  meant  that  their  tastes  and 
inclinations  are  capricious,  and  not  that  they 
would,  even  if  they  could,  enter  upon  the  task 
of  passing  judgment  upon  the  verdict  of  the 
world.  Fashion  may  and  does  make  rules  which 
cannot  be  broken  with  impunity,  so  far  as  the 
pocket  is  concerned ;  it  may  even  create  an 
extraordinary  and  exceptional  interest  in  one 
author  to-day,  and  abandon  him  to-morrow, 
and  do  many  other  wonderful  things  to  cause 
our  unsympathetic  neighbours  to  blaspheme ; 
but  the  romance  of  book-collecting  would  be  no 
romance  were  it  stolidly  kept  at  one  dead  level 
of  insensibility.  To  employ  a  homely  illustra- 
tion —  though  Fashion  may  decorate  a  house, 
it  can  neither  build  one  nor  raze  one  to  the 
ground. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    RULES    OF   THE    CHASE. 

THERE  was  a  time,  and  that  not  so  very 
many  years  ago,  when  old  books  were,  if 
only  you  got  out  of  the  central  mart,  dim- 
cult  to  procure,  and  by  no  means  easy  to  store. 
They  were  frequently  in  folio,  huge  ponderous 
works  which,  unless  they  were  of  the  very  best, 
challenged  the  courage  of  all  but  veterans,  as  they 
looked  down  from  their  dark  corners.  There 
was  no  escaping  them,  no  getting  away  from  their 
costly  presence,  and  no  reading  them  either  with- 
out sitting  at  a  table  ;  for  *  literary  machines'  were 
not  then  invented,  and  no  one  seemed  to  care  about 
lingering  with  arched  back  over  a  fire,  with  sixty 
or  eighty  pounds  weight  of  paper  on  his  knees. 
Such  a  discipline  would  have  been  valuable,  no 
doubt,  but  learning  grew  lazy  when  it  left  the 
monasteries,  and  a  table  became  a  virtual  neces- 
sity for  most  folk.  After  a  time  folios  were 
turned  into  octavos,  and  the  price  cheapened. 
The  '  extraneous  Tegg,'  as  Carlyle  calls  the  well- 
known  bookseller,  and  our  friends  Cooke,  Walker, 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  1 27 

Bell,  and  many  more,  commenced  to  cut  the  throat 
of  the  trade,  and  to  ruin  the  honest  author,  by 
printing  favourite  books  at  such  a  very  cheap  rate 
that  the  public  soon  became  totally  demoralized. 
Cooke  made  an  enormous  fortune — for  a  book- 
seller— and  died  amid  the  plaudits  of  the  mob 
and  the  curses  of  his  competitors,  for  he  had  out- 
Heroded  Herod  in  prostituting  '  Tom  Jones,'  a 
thing  deemed  impossible,  by  publishing  the  text 
in  numbers,  verbatim  et  literatim,  at  a  scandalously 
cheap  price.  Then  he  approached  other  '  British 
novelists '  in  turn,  and  went  through  the  entire 
pantheon,  winding  up  with  a  series  of  sacred 
classics.  Cooke  was  a  man  of  immense  resource, 
and  no  scruples;  he  got  the  author  out  of  the 
way  (I  don't  say  he  murdered  him),  sold  up  his 
rivals,  and  positively  lived  to  an  advanced  age — 
three  crimes  which  procured  him  hosts  of  enemies, 
but  nevertheless  altered  the  whole  system  of  pub- 
lishing, and  solved  for  ever  the  problem  whether  it 
is  better  or  worse  for  the  producer  to  sell  fifty 
articles  at  a  penny  each,  or  a  single  one  of  the  same 
kind  for  four  and  two. 

Now,  Cooke's  procedure,  and  that  of  the  other 
booksellers  who  were  wise  enough  to  follow  his 
lead,  not  only  had  great  influence  in  moulding 
the  character  of  the  bibliophiles  of  that  day,  but 
is  directly  responsible  even  now  for  many  of 
those  rules  and  regulations  which  their  descend- 
ants are  sticklers  in  the  preservation  of.  A  folio 
had  always  been  bound  in  a  manner  suitable  to  its 


128  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

bulk,  and  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  a  new 
binding  unnecessary  for  a  very  long  time,  and 
there  was,  consequently,  little  or  no  necessity  for 
rules  of  any  kind  for  its  preservation.  When  the 
folio  was  hoisted  to  its  place,  there  it  would  stop, 
or,  if  taken  down,  it  would  be  with  a  considerable 
amount  of  caution. 

Not  so  Cooke's  cheap  and  easily  handled  pro- 
ductions. They  were  light  and  airy,  and  bound 
in  millboard,  which,  after  a  moderate  use,  never 
failed  to  come  to  pieces.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
nearly  all  Cooke's  books  met  with  on  the  stalls 
to-day  show  unmistakable  evidence  of  honest 
handling.  They  are  thumbed,  perhaps  torn,  and 
always  very  feeble  in  the  cover.  Should  it  have 
been  worth  anyone's  while  to  rebind  one  of 
these  cheap  little  volumes,  we  may  be  sure  that 
it  will  show  a  stout  leather  cover,  and  be  scrupu- 
lously cut  down  to  the  headlines  for  the  sake  of 
the  shavings.  This  cropping  of  margins  was  no 
crime  then,  because  there  was  no  rule  to  the 
contrary,  and  Cooke  turned  out  his  books  in  such 
numbers  that  they  were  really  of  very  trifling 
value  at  any  time.  Before  his  day,  it  was  a 
common  practice  for  the  publishers  themselves  to 
have  their  books  bound  in  leather,  and  for  the 
binders  to  cut  as  much  of  the  margins  away  as 
they  decently  could. 

For  instance,  let  us  revert  to  '  Tom  Jones,'  one 
of  the  first  books  experimented  upon  by  the 
first  of  really  cheap  publishers.  When  this 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  129 

novel  came  out,  in  1749,  it  made  its  appearance 
in  six  small  volumes  bound  uniformly  in  leather, 
with  edges  more  or  less  cropped.  This  cropping 
process  seems  to  have  pleased  Fielding  immensely, 
or  at  any  rate  there  is  no  doubt  in  the  world  that 
he  preferred  to  see  his  handiwork  issued  in  the 
way  common  to  folios,  rather  than  in  boards  with 
ragged  edges,  for  a  sample  set  of  volumes  was 
done  up  in  the  latter  style  and  rejected. 

We  think  him  foolish,  because  not  very  long 
ago  the  sample  set  was  discovered  in  an  old  farm- 
house, and,  after  changing  hands  once  or  twice, 
packed  off  to  the  auction-rooms,  where  it  realized 
the  handsome  sum  of  £69.  A  little  bit  of  paper 
made  an  immense  difference  in  this  case,  for  its 
presence  was  in  conformity  with  an  imperative 
rule  that  has  grown  up  since  Fielding's  day,  and 
which  lays  it  down  that  never — no,  never — must 
a  book  be  denuded  of  its  margins  if  you  wish 
to  make  the  most  of  it.  Whatever  its  quality, 
do  not  deprive  it  of  the  minutest  fraction  of 
its  legitimate  area  of  paper.  Of  course,  this 
drastic  regulation  came  into  force  when  books 
began  to  be  generally  published,  not  in  folio 
or  quarto,  but  in  a  smaller  and  more  handy 
size. 

Collectors,  whether  of  books  or  anything  else, 
are  content  at  first  with  a  little.  Their  require- 
ments are  indeed  boundless,  so  far  as  number  is 
concerned ;  but  they  have  not  yet  become  solici- 
tous of  technical  or  minute  distinctions.  A  book 


1 30   The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

is  a  book,  and  a  coin  is  a  coin,  and  they  are 
satisfied  without  it,  provided  it  is  substantially 
the  same  as  some  other  copy  of  the  same  edition, 
or  some  other  coin  struck  from  the  same  die, 
which  they  happen  to  have.  After  a  while,  how- 
ever, a  very  natural  desire  to  excel  produces  its 
inevitable  result,  and  all  sorts  of  arbitrary  varia- 
tions are  catalogued  and  insisted  upon  by  those 
who  have  plenty  of  money,  and  at  the  same  time 
pride  themselves  on  their  discrimination  and 
taste.  Thus  it  is  that  a  comparatively  scarce 
book,  this  first  edition  of  '  Tom  Jones,'  for  in- 
stance, may  become  excessively  scarce  under 
exceptional  circumstances.  True,  the  collector 
who  is  a  terrible  stickler  for  detail  may,  and 
probably  will,  be  charged  sooner  or  later  with 
being  a  fool  for  his  pains  ;  but  that  penalty  he 
is  content  to  accept,  happy  in  the  consciousness 
that,  when  everything  is  said  and  done,  he  has 
chosen  the  better  part,  which  in  all  these  cases 
consists  in  leaving  well  alone. 

Not  long  ago  a  London  newspaper,  which 
ought  to  have  known  better,  was  very  angry 
with  a  collector  of  the  circumspect  school  because 
he  had  boasted  that  all  the  books  in  his  library 
were  'uncut.'  'This  shows/  said  the  sage  who 
wrote  the*article,  '  that  he  has  a  hundred  or  more 
books  which  he  has  never  read,  and,  what  is. 
worse  has  no  intention  of  reading.'  He  thought 
that  'uncut'  meant  'not  cut  open,'  and  perhaps 
thinks  so  still,  for  it  was  worth  no  one's  while 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  1 3 1 

to  teach   him    his   business,  and    so  the  matter 
dropped. 

The  cropping  of  books  has,  indeed,  become 
as  iniquitous  as  the  old  Star  Chamber  practice 
of  cropping  of  ears,  or  perhaps  even  more  so,  for 
some  at  least  of  the  delinquents  who  appeared  to 
the  usual  Writ  of  Rebellion,  which  it  was  the 
practice  of  that  tribunal  to  issue  from  time  to 
time,  richly  deserved  all  they  got.  The  proper 
way  to  deal  with  a  book  is  to  burn  it  if  it  be 
wicked,  and  if  not,  to  leave  it  alone  ;  though,  if 
this  fact  had  always  been  recognised,  there  would 
have  been  no  scope  for  us  in  the  matter  of  broad 
expanse  of  margin,  since  what  everybody  has  no 
one  craves  for. 

Fine  bindings  are  a  law  unto  themselves,  and 
require  separate  consideration ;  but  there  is  a 
matter  connected  with  bindings  generally,  or, 
rather,  with  the  advisability  of  binding  at  all,  which 
has  created  a  considerable  amount  of  scandal  in 
times  past.  Let  us  take  that  scarce  book,  *  The 
English  Dance  of  Death,'  which  William  Combe 
wrote  in  the  safe  seclusion  of  the  King's  Bench 
Prison.  It  appeared  originally  in  1815  in  parts, 
each  with  its  wrapper,  and  afterwards  was  bound 
up  in  two  volumes,  whereupon  it  at  once  lost, 
according  to  present-day  ideas  on  the  subject, 
five-sixths  of  its  value. 

The  '  Tale  of  Two  Cities  '  when  in  the  original 
eight  parts  is  worth  three  times  as  much,  at 
least,  as  when  in  the  publisher's  cloth  binding, 

9—2 


1 30  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

is  a  book,  and  a  coin  is  a  coin,  and  they  are 
satisfied  without  it,  provided  it  is  substantially 
the  same  as  some  other  copy  of  the  same  edition, 
or  some  other  coin  struck  from  the  same  die, 
which  they  happen  to  have.  After  a  while,  how- 
ever, a  very  natural  desire  to  excel  produces  its 
inevitable  result,  and  all  sorts  of  arbitrary  varia- 
tions are  catalogued  and  insisted  upon  by  those 
who  have  plenty  of  money,  and  at  the  same  time 
pride  themselves  on  their  discrimination  and 
taste.  Thus  it  is  that  a  comparatively  scarce 
book,  this  first  edition  of  '  Tom  Jones,'  for  in- 
stance, may  become  excessively  scarce  under 
exceptional  circumstances.  True,  the  collector 
who  is  a  terrible  stickler  for  detail  may,  and 
probably  will,  be  charged  sooner  or  later  with 
being  a  fool  for  his  pains  ;  but  that  penalty  he 
is  content  to  accept,  happy  in  the  consciousness 
that,  when  everything  is  said  and  done,  he  has 
chosen  the  better  part,  which  in  all  these  cases 
consists  in  leaving  well  alone. 

Not  long  ago  a  London  newspaper,  which 
ought  to  have  known  better,  was  very  angry 
with  a  collector  of  the  circumspect  school  because 
he  had  boasted  that  all  the  books  in  his  library 
were  'uncut.'  'This  shows/  said  the  sage  who 
wrote  the*article,  '  that  he  has  a  hundred  or  more 
books  which  he  has  never  read,  and,  what  is. 
worse  has  no  intention  of  reading.'  He  thought 
that  'uncut'  meant  'not  cut  open,'  and  perhaps 
thinks  so  still,  for  it  was  worth  no  one's  while 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  1 3 1 

to  teach  him  his  business,  and  so  the  matter 
dropped. 

The  cropping  of  books  has,  indeed,  become 
as  iniquitous  as  the  old  Star  Chamber  practice 
of  cropping  of  ears,  or  perhaps  even  more  so,  for 
some  at  least  of  the  delinquents  who  appeared  to 
the  usual  Writ  of  Rebellion,  which  it  was  the 
practice  of  that  tribunal  to  issue  from  time  to 
time,  richly  deserved  all  they  got.  The  proper 
way  to  deal  with  a  book  is  to  burn  it  if  it  be 
wicked,  and  if  not,  to  leave  it  alone  ;  though,  if 
this  fact  had  always  been  recognised,  there  would 
have  been  no  scope  for  us  in  the  matter  of  broad 
expanse  of  margin,  since  what  everybody  has  no 
one  craves  for. 

Fine  bindings  are  a  law  unto  themselves,  and 
require  separate  consideration ;  but  there  is  a 
matter  connected  with  bindings  generally,  or, 
rather,  with  the  advisability  of  binding  at  all,  which 
has  created  a  considerable  amount  of  scandal  in 
times  past.  Let  us  take  that  scarce  book,  *  The 
English  Dance  of  Death,'  which  William  Combe 
wrote  in  the  safe  seclusion  of  the  King's  Bench 
Prison.  It  appeared  originally  in  1815  in  parts, 
each  with  its  wrapper,  and  afterwards  was  bound 
up  in  two  volumes,  whereupon  it  at  once  lost, 
according  to  present-day  ideas  on  the  subject, 
five-sixths  of  its  value. 

The  '  Tale  of  Two  Cities  '  when  in  the  original 
eight  parts  is  worth  three  times  as  much,  at 
least,  as  when  in  the  publisher's  cloth  binding, 

9—2 


132    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

and  nearly  all  Thackeray's  more  important  works 
are  subject  to  a  very  considerable  reduction  under 
identical  circumstances.  Curiously  enough,  the 
rule  is  imperative  in  certain  specific  instances, 
while  in  others  it  has  no  application  at  all.  The 
question  whether  to  apply  it  or  not  depends  on  the 
character  of  the  book.  We  should  insist  upon  the 
parts  being  left  unbound  in  the  case  of '  Bells  and 
Pomegranates,'  but  not  in  that  of  Trusler's  1833 
edition  of  *  Hogarth  Moralized,'  for  here  the 
twenty-six  parts  are  a  positive  nuisance  unless 
they  are  bound.  Trusler's  melancholy  production 
is  not  much  good,  bound  or  unbound,  but  it  will 
serve  as  an  illustration,  and  certain  it  is  that  the 
cost  of  binding  will  have  to  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration when  estimating  the  worth  of  the 
numbers,  in  case  anyone  thrusts  them  upon  a 
long-suffering  purchaser,  and  will  not  be  denied. 

'  Fools  you  are !'  says  Sir  Ensor  Doone,  under 
other  circumstances,  and  '  Idiots  !'  adds  the  man 
in  the  street  when  he  reads  that  somebody  has 
paid  a  large  sum  for  '  Ask  Mamma '  in  the 
'  original  thirteen  parts,'  when  he  could,  had  he 
been  so  minded,  have  got  the  entire  book,  nicely 
bound,  for  a  fourth  of  the  money — plates,  text, 
and  all.  This  is  the  cry  whenever  a  sum  which 
appears  exorbitant  on  the  face  of  it  is  paid  for 
anything. 

A  short  time  ago  £445  was  obtained  for  a 
fiddle  by  Stradivari ;  £798  for  an  imperfect  silver 
cup  made  by  Jacob  Frolich,  master  of  Nuremberg 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  133 

in  1555  ;  and  £246  odd  for  a  rose-point  flounce 
of  Venetian  lace  three  yards  long.  Nothing  was 
said  about  the  enormity  of  these  sums,  but  let  a 
fiftieth  part  of  the  smallest  amount  be  realized  at 
any  time  for  a  book  '  in  parts,'  and  there  is  a 
chorus  of  disapprobation,  for  which,  however,  it 
must  be  confessed,  there  is  just  a  modicum  of 
warrant. 

It  is  really  not  at  all  easy  to  see  why  a  series  of 
numbers,  liable  at  any  moment  to  injury,  and 
always  inconvenient  to  handle,  should,  the  quality 
of  the  plates,  if  there  are  any,  and  other  acces- 
sories being  equal,  be  so  greatly  preferred  to  a 
volume  bound  in  a  proper  manner.  Perhaps  it  is 
a  matter  of  sentiment,  perhaps  of  pure  scarcity,  or 
perhaps  the  bond-fide  book-collector  likes  to  give 
himself  as  much  trouble  as  he  possibly  can,  by 
way  of  purifying  his  life  and  chastening  his  soul. 
However  this  may  be,  there  is  no  question  that 
some  books  are  thought  more  highly  of  when  in 
sections,  and  that  the  public  in  their  blindness 
fail  to  see  the  reason  why. 

Well,  there  is,  at  any  rate,  much  less  reason, 
one  would  think,  in  paying  £246  for  a  lace  flounce 
wherewith  to  minister  to  the  vanity  of  some 
middle-aged  dame  than  there  is  for  incurring  a 
fractional  obligation  for  classic  works,  which  will 
outlast  us  by  many  a  day,  even  though  they  may 
have  the  fortune  to  be  uncut  and  in  parts  as 
issued.  And  besides,  O  shade  of  Mr.  Burgess  ! 
did  you  not  ignore  in  your  lifetime  the  rule  that  it 


1 34  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

were  best  to  let  well  alone,  and  were  not  the  con- 
sequences terrible  in  the  extreme  ?* 

Whether  any  regulations  are  really  necessary 
for  the  proper  preservation  of  books  old  or  new 
let  the  bibliophiles  determine ;  but  so  long  as  they 
exist  it  is  folly  to  ignore  them.  Nay,  further,  to 
be  as  far  upon  the  safe  side  as  possible,  we  must 
prefer  to  buy  our  books  with  due  regard  to  those 
rules  and  orders  which  our  progenitors  have  in 
their  wisdom  drawn  up,  selecting  the  very  best 
copies  we  can  afford  to  pay  or  obtain  credit  for, 
and  even  going  to  the  length  of  investing  in 
1  parts '  which  shall  not  shame  us,  or  cause  us 
loss  when  the  inevitable  hour  of  parting  arrives. 

The  cardinal  rule  of  the  game  is  triple-headed, 
and  it  is  this  :  Buy  the  best  you  can,  spend  what 
you  find  convenient  without  stint,  and,  above  all, 
keep  to  the  track  you  have  mapped  out  for  your- 
self and  have  so  far  followed.  Then  will  it  be 
well  with  you  now  and  hereafter  in  all  things 
bookish.  Act  the  contrary  throughout,  and  every 
stiver  you  spend  will  swell  the  total  of  your  con- 
fusion ;  drop  by  drop  the  clepsydra  of  your 
fortunes  will  run  out  to  your  bane. 

*  The  library  of  the  late  Mr.  Frederick  Burgess  was  sold 
by  Messrs.  Sotheby  on  May  31  and  three  subsequent 
days,  1894.  It  consisted  almost  entirely  of  then  'Fashion- 
able '  books,  illustrated  by  Cruikshank  and  other  talented 
artists.  Parts  had  been  bound  up,  original  cloth  covers 
removed,  and  expensive  bindings  substituted,  not  merely  in 
a  few  instances,  but  as  a  general  rule.  The  collection, 
though  an  excellent  one  of  its  kind,  was  disposed  of  at  an 
enormous  sacrifice. 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  1 35 

But  the  rules  which  hem  in  the  book-buyer, 
and  direct  his  course,  are  not  solely  confined 
to  technical  points  and  details  such  as  those 
mentioned.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  equally 
stringent  in  many  other  respects,  and  in  par- 
ticular as  to  the  description  of  book  to  buy,  its 
condition,  and  so  on ;  for  it  is  taken  for  granted 
that  no  man,  or  at  least  no  bookman  worthy  the 
name,  would  purchase  a  bad  or  inferior  edition 
when  he  could  get  a  better,  or  a  volume  that  was 
imperfect  or  had  been  shamefully  used  by  a 
succession  of  careless  owners.  Between  the 
quality  of  one  edition  and  another  there  is  often 
an  immense  difference,  as  all  the  world  knows,  or 
ought  to  know.  That  edition  of  '  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  a  Poem  in  twelve  books,  the  author  John 
Milton,  Printed  for  the  Proprietors  and  sold  by 
all  the  Booksellers,'  no  date,  but  about  1780,  is 
one  of  the  very  worst  that  any  misguided  man 
ever  picked  up  from  a  street  stall.  The  mistakes, 
not  merely  in  punctuation,  but  in  spelling,  are 
too  gross  and  scandalous  for  mention ;  entire  lines 
are  not  infrequently  missing,  and  whole  sentences 
often  perverted.  Contrast  this  with  any  copy  of 
the  first  edition,  no  matter  which  title-page  may 
have  heralded  it  into  the  world,  and  we  have  a 
different  book  entirely.  The  rule  says  that, 
though  an  ordinary  copy  of  the  first  edition  may 
be  three  thousand  times  as  valuable  in  money  as 
this  gutter  abortion,  you  must  nevertheless  not 
be  attracted  by  the  latter  because  it  is  cheap — no, 


136    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

not  even  though  you  should  think  it  good  enough 
for  everyday  use. 

Naturally  enough  there  are  free-lances  among 
bookmen,  people  who  are  a  law  unto  themselves, 
and  insist  upon  doing  precisely  as  they  like,  but 
it  will  be  noticed  that  they  very  rarely  fly  in  the 
face  of  any  rule  in  important  cases.  Your  free- 
lance has  the  courage  of  the  Seven  Champions  of 
Christendom  when  face  to  face  with  Stackhouse's 
'  History  of  the  Bible,'  but  let  him,  for  example, 
come  across  'Tamerlaine,  and  other  Poems,  By 
a  Bostonian ;'  not  Herne  Shepherd's  London 
reprint,  but  the  original  tract  which  Calvin  F.  S. 
Thomas  printed  at  Boston  in  1827.  Let  us 
suppose  also  that  it  is  in  its  original  tea-tinted 
paper  covers,  just  as  Edgar  Allen  Poe  sent  it 
forth  into  the  world.  What  would  our  free-lance 
do  ?  Have  it  rebound  in  defiance  of  the  rule  ? 
Hardly,  for  if  he  did  he  would  reduce  the  im- 
portance of  his  exceptionally  fortunate  find,  and 
therefore  its  value,  to  such  a  considerable  extent 
that  even  he  would  hesitate  long  before  com- 
mitting himself  to  an  act  that  could  never  be 
recalled.  Moreover,  he  would  have  direct  evi- 
dence with  regard  to  a  copy  of  this  very 
pamphlet  before  his  eyes,  for  a  collector  once 
really  did  pick  one  up  for  a  few  pence.  In  the 
first  place,  let  it  be  stated  that  only  three  copies 
of  'Tamerlaine'  can  now  be  traced.  One  is  in 
the  British  Museum,  which  acquired  it  from  the 
late  Mr.  Henry  Stevens  for  one  shilling.  A  second 


The  Rules  of  the  Chase  137 

was  found  on  a  stall  in  America  for  the  equivalent 
of  something  less,  and  it  is  this  latter  copy  which 
furnishes  the  evidence  referred  to.  The  fortunate 
finder  sent  it  to  Messrs.  C.  F.  Libbie  and  Co., 
the  auctioneers  of  Boston,  who  sold  it  by  auction 
in  1893  for  the  equivalent  of  £370  to  the  agents 
of  Mr.  George  F.  Maxwell,  of  New  York,  who  had 
the  pamphlet  rebound  in  magnificent  style  by 
Lortic  Fils,  at  a  cost  of  several  hundred  dollars. 
Moreover,  the  covers  were  bound  in,  and  the 
edges  left  untrimmed.  No  expense  was  spared  ; 
everything  was  done  in  proper  order  according  to 
rule  of  thumb.  Yet  in  April,  1895,  when  Mr. 
Maxwell's  valuable  library  was  sold  by  the  same 
auctioneers,  this  copy  of  '  Tamerlaine/  vastly 
improved  as  one  might  think,  dropped  to  £290, 
showing  a  clear  loss  of  £80,  irrespective  altogether 
of  the  amount  paid  for  binding,  auctioneers'  com- 
mission, and  so  on. 

It  may,  of  course,  be  said  that  it  is  a  common 
thing  for  the  same  book  to  bring  different  amounts 
at  different  times,  even  when  the  sales  take  place 
within  a  few  months  of  each  other.  A  bookseller, 
dissatisfied  with  the  amount  bid  for  some  scarce 
work  he  has  put  on  the  market,  will  frequently 
buy  it  in  and  offer  it  again  later  on  with  satis- 
factory results. 

But  '  Tamerlaine  '  is  an  altogether  exceptional 
piece,  and,  moreover,  where  were  the  gentlemen 
who  respectively  bid  £360  and  £365  on  the  occa- 
sion when  Mr.  Maxwell  secured  it  for  a  slightly 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   GLAMOUR  OF   BINDINGS. 

r  I  ^HERE  being  in  very  truth  no  new  thing 
under  the  sun,  it  would  be  egotistical  in 
the  highest  degree,  and  absurd,  to  assert 
positively  that  the  argument  about  to  be  advanced 
is  at  all  novel,  though  it  may  certainly  appear 
strange.  It  is,  however,  original  so  far  as  I  am 
concerned,  for  I  have  not  seen  it  hinted  at  before 
by  anyone,  much  less  carried  to  a  conclusion. 
Whether  there  be  any  warrant  for  it  or  no  is  a 
point  for  others,  who  have  a  greater  capacity  for 
distinguishing  reason  in  probabilities  than  I  can 
lay  claim  to,  to  determine  for  themselves. 

It  is  admitted  by  all  writers  who  have  studied 
the  subject  of  bookbinding  from  its  historical 
aspect,  that,  as  the  monks  of  the  Middle  Ages 
were  the  sole  producers  of  books,  so  also  they 
were  the  only  binders,  and  that  the  record  of 
their  achievements  dates  from  about  520  A.D., 
when  Dagaeus,  the  Irish  monk,  practised  his  art, 
to  the  invention  of  printing  from  movable  types  by 
Gutenberg  and  Fust  nearly  a  thousand  years  later. 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         141 

Not  merely  in  England,  but  all  over  Europe,  the 
monks  were  practically  the  sole  custodians  of 
knowledge  during  the  earlier  part  of  this  period  ; 
they  alone  produced  books,  they  alone  bound 
them,  they  alone  could  read  them.  There  were, 
no  doubt,  laymen  who  could  read  and  write,  but 
neither  accomplishment  was  general  in  the  outer 
world.  King  Alfred  (A.D.  870)  was  a  scholar ; 
William  the  Conqueror,  two  centuries  later,  could 
neither  read  nor  write. 

The  Stowe  MS.  No.  960  contains  all  that 
remains  of  the  register  of  Hyde  Abbey,  Win- 
chester, from  the  time  of  King  Canute,  one  of  its 
earliest  benefactors,  to  the  Dissolution.  Among 
the  many  interesting  articles  in  this  Stowe  manu- 
script there  is  one  which  exceeds  all  the  rest 
in  interest,  for  it  bears  the  actual  cross,  sign 
or  signature  made  by  William  in  testimony  that 
he  had  granted  9  hides  of  land  to  the  monks,  in 
exchange  for  the  site  of  the  cemetery  in  the  city  of 
Winchester.  The  King  has  drawn  with  a  quill  a 
rude  and  most  illiterate  cross,  if  such  a  thing  can 
be  imagined.  The  ink  has  not  flown  evenly  from  a 
pen  evidently  held  in  a  perpendicular  position  with 
tremulous  and  infirm  grip.  Each  line  begins  with 
a  splutter,  and  at  the  point  of  intersection  there  is 
what  looks  suspiciously  like  a  blot.  It  is  obvious 
at  the  first  glance  that  King  William,  though  a 
man  of  many  accomplishments  eminently  useful 
in  those  days,  was  accustomed  to  wield  the  battle- 
axe  rather  than  the  pen.  And  this  was  so  general 


142    The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

for  centuries  after  his  day  that,  but  for  the  monks, 
there  would  have  been  no  learning  at  all,  and  no 
books  all  that  time. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  refer  to  this  phase  of  the 
matter  further  than  to  say  that  all  the  ancient  and 
medieval  European  manuscripts  which  still  exist 
were  written  by  ecclesiastics,  and  doubtless  bound 
by  them  as  well.  Manuscripts  of  the  ninth 
century,  beautifully  encased  in  ivory,  silver  and 
gold,  and  sometimes  encrusted  with  precious 
stones,  are  still  extant.  These  are  undoubtedly 
monkish,  and  the  question  arises,  What  has  be- 
come of  the  vast  bulk  of  which  these  are  but  a 
remnant  ?  What  has  become  of  the  old  English 
libraries  that  existed  in  hundreds  at  the  time  of 
the  Reformation  ?  Were  they,  all  but  a  very 
few,  wantonly  destroyed  by  those  who  undertook 
the  spoliation  of  the  monasteries,  or  did  many 
escape  them?  and  if  so,  where  are  they  now? 
The  suggestion  that  innumerable  volumes,  particu- 
larly those  which  were  handsomely  and  expensively 
bound,  would  never  be  seen  by  the  raiders  at  all 
is  not  so  improbable  as  it  may  at  first  sight  appear, 
when  we  come  to  consider  the  facts. 

In  November,  1534,  an  Act  of  Parliament 
declared  that  'the  King's  Highness  was  the 
supreme  head  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  had 
authority  to  reform  and  redress  all  errors,  heresies, 
and  abuses  in  the  same.'  This  Act  was  speedily 
followed  up,  for  in  1535  Cromwell,  in  his  capacity 
of  Vicar-General,  proceeded  to  make  a  visitation 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings          143 

of  the  monasteries,  where  he  is  said  to  have  found 
such  evidences  of  shameless  immorality  that 
another  Act  was  passed,  transferring  such  of 
these  establishments  to  the  Crown  as  were  not  of 
the  annual  value  of  £200. 

The  number  of  religious  houses  at  this  time 
dissolved,  raided  and  sacked  amounted  to  376. 
With  diabolical  minuteness  the  revenues  of  each 
and  all  were  estimated  to  the  last  penny.  Bangor 
was  worth  £151  35.,  and  was  accordingly  seized 
on  the  spot.  St.  David  easily  escaped  for  the  time 
being,  for  the  revenue  of  that  monastery  proved 
to  be  £426  2s.  id.  St.  Asaph,  being  assessed  at 
£202  ios.,  escaped  an  early  wreck  by  £2  los.  It 
was  the  same  all  over  England  and  Wales.  The 
revenue  was  estimated,  and  if  it  fell  below  £200, 
the  monastery  was  at  once  filled  with  armed  men, 
while  Cromwell's  experts  stripped  the  walls  of 
their  arras,  seized  the  gold  and  silver  vessels, 
tore  up  the  books,  scoured  the  neighbourhood 
round  about  for  game,  tapped  the  vintage,  and 
thoroughly  enjoyed  themselves  in  their  own 
peculiar  way. 

It  is  recorded  that  priceless  books  and  manu- 
scripts were  wantonly  destroyed,  tombs  sacri- 
legiously broken  to  pieces  for  the  sake  of  the 
metal,  often  merely  lead  or  brass,  that  extolled 
the  virtues  or  the  lineage  of  those  who  slept 
below ;  silver  and  gold  plate  of  exquisite  work- 
manship, and  of  a  degree  of  antiquity  rarely,  if 
ever,  seen  now,  were  melted  down  and  sold  by 


144   The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

weight ;  buildings  of  an  architectural  beauty  un- 
surpassed anywhere  were  wantonly  defaced,  and 
in  many  cases  dismantled,  for  the  sake  of  the 
materials,  and  in  the  midst  of  this  disgraceful 
scene  of  plunder  and  desecration,  the  destroyers 
fought  with  one  another  as  desperately  as  Roman 
gladiators  of  the  days  of  Nero,  for  the  possession 
of  some  coveted  jewel  or  ornament  that  all  wanted 
and  only  one  could  have. 

Now  here  comes  the  crux  of  the  argument. 
Only  the  smaller  houses  were  dissolved  at  this 
time,  and  unless  human  nature  were  totally 
different  in  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.  from  what  it 
is  now,  unless  the  Abbots  of  Furness,  Bolton, 
Fountains,  and  other  large  and  extremely  rich 
monasteries,  looked  on  unmoved  while  their 
humbler  brethren  were  stripped  to  the  skin  and 
flung  destitute  into  the  lanes  and  ditches  to  die, 
then  it  is  morally  certain  that  they  would  take 
steps  to  protect  themselves,  as  far  as  lay  in  their 
power,  from  the  fury  of  the  storm  which  they 
must  have  known  would  shortly  burst  over  their 
heads.  Unless  they  were  wholly  infatuated,  they 
would  cautiously  and  gradually  remove  their 
choicest  possessions,  their  basins,  images,  cen- 
sers, crucifixes  and  chalices,  and  above  all  their 
precious  volumes,  with  which  the  very  history  and 
fortunes  of  the  abbey  were  associated,  and  bury 
them  deep  down,  perhaps  fifteen  or  twenty  feet, 
under  the  walls. 

The  ruin  brought  at  this  time  upon  all  that  was 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         145 

priceless  by  reason  of  its  antiquity  and  associa- 
tions is  incalculable,  and  the  only  ray  of  consola- 
tion let  in  upon  these  dark  days'  doings  is  that 
the  Abbots  of  the  larger  monasteries,  taking 
warning  from  what  they  saw  going  on  all  around, 
may  have  buried  their  choicest  possessions,  where, 
perhaps,  they  will  be  found  some  of  these  days, 
when  the  plough  shall  furrow  up  the  dust  of 
Furness  or  Denever. 

Many  of  the  inventories  taken  by  the  King's 
agents  are  extant.  One  of  them,  that  of  Foun- 
tains, taken  just  before  the  Dissolution,  will  suffice 
to  show  what  is  meant.  The  value  of  all  the  plate, 
gold  and  silver,  amounted  to  £708  55.  gfd. — a 
comparatively  small  sum,  seeing  that  the  cattle, 
sheep  and  swine  belonging  to  the  abbey  were  of 
much  greater  value.  Not  a  single  book  of  any 
kind  is  scheduled,  and  yet  the  library  of  Fountains 
was  at  one  time  the  most  extensive  and  important 
in  Yorkshire.  As  the  Knights  Templars  buried 
their  gold  under  the  high  altar  in  the  church  of 
the  New  Temple,  yet  standing  within  sound  of  the 
roar  of  Fleet  Street,  in  order  to  protect  it  against 
the  rapacity  of  Edward  I.,  so  it  is  suggested  that 
the  Abbots  of  Fountains  and  other  surviving 
houses  buried  their  treasures  in  the  most  sacred 
place  they  could  think  of,  thereby  handing  them 
over,  as  it  were,  to  God  and  the  right,  rather 
than  abandon  them  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
-man. 

Now,  this  is  merely  an  argument  based  upon 

10 


146  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

probability.;  it  cannot,  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  be  supported  by  a  scrap  of  evidence,  and 
yet  it  carries  with  it  such  a  ring  of  truth  in  my 
ears  that,  were  I  the  happy  owner  of  one  of  those 
fast-crumbling  piles  which  still  rear  their  rugged 
fronts  to  the  sky,  I  would,  by  all  the  enamels  of 
Limoges,  by  the  ivory,  gold  and  silver,  and  rubies 
which  make  up  this  glamour  of  bindings  unseen, 
put  the  argument  to  the  test  without  hesitation 
and  regardless  of  cost. 

Monastic  bindings  of  English  workmanship- 
are  not,  as  we  may  well  understand,  distinguished 
as  a  rule  for  extreme  beauty.  The  gorgeous 
covers  that  protected  illuminated  manuscripts, 
themselves  extremely  valuable,  were  in  vogue  at  a 
very  early  period,  long  before  the  invention  of 
printing,  and  the  vast  majority  were  probably 
either  hidden  away  as  suggested,  or  destroyed. 
In  any  case,  however,  they  must  have  been  rare 
even  a  thousand  years  ago — as  rare,  indeed,  as 
the  exceptionally  fine  missals  and  breviaries  they 
protected,  some  of  which  would  take  a  monk  his 
lifetime  to  produce.  We  find  that  by  the  four- 
teenth century  monastic  bindings  were  usually 
serviceable  and  plain,  and  that  it  was  only  occa- 
sionally that  rich  materials  were  employed,  as, 
for  example,  when  a  King's  library  was  added 
to,  or  some  important  monastery  gave  a  special 
order  by  way  of  continuing  the  traditions  of  the 
house,  and  showing  that  time  had  not  in  any 
way  curtailed  its  glories.  The  most  interesting 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         147 

ancient  bindings  that  yet  survive  to  us  consist  of 
a  specimen  of  the  work  of  the  monk  Dagseus, 
which  dates  from  about  520  A.D.,  and  a  manu- 
script known  as  the  '  Textus  Sanctus  Cuthberti,' 
bound  in  velvet  with  a  broad  silver  border,  and 
inlaid  with  gems,  by  the  first  English  binder,  one 
Bilfred,  a  monk  of  Durham,  who  was  living  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighth  century.  This  is  the 
holy  volume  that  was  swallowed  up  by  the  sea, 
and,  according  to  the  old  legend,  restored  out  of 
respect  for  the  memory  of  the  saint,  or  perhaps 
that  of  the  monk  or  both. 

We  have,  therefore,  two  styles  of  monastic 
bindings — one  resplendent  in  gold,  ivory,  and 
precious  stones,  and  the  other  of  a  more  sober 
character  for  ordinary  and  daily  use.  The  latter 
were  of  wood  covered  with  embossed  leather,  or 
with  plain  shark  skin,  or  even  seal.  They  were 
ponderous,  massive  folios  of  great  weight  and 
durability,  protected  in  vulnerable  parts  with 
brass  or  iron  bosses  and  corner-plates.  We  find 
them  produced  as  a  matter  of  course  to  about  the 
time  of  the  Renaissance,  when  they  gradually 
gave  place  to  smaller  books  bound  in  velvet  or 
silk,  and  embroidered  by  abbesses  and  nuns,  and 
so  the  custom  prevailed  until  the  days  of  the  first 
printers,  when  calf  and  morocco  were  introduced 
from  the  East  by  the  Venetians,  and  pigskin  or 
thick  parchment  became  fashionable.  Prior  to 
this  time  oaken  boards  formed  the  groundwork  of 
every  binding,  and  to  this  day  the  word  '  boards ' 

10 — 2 


148  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

is  in  general    use,  although    the   reason   for   its 
existence  obtains  no  longer. 

The  Italians  were  the  first  to  awaken  to  a 
sense  of  the  propriety  of  things,  and  the  modern 
collector  to  whom  bindings  appeal  with  an  irre- 
sistible force  instinctively  turns  to  the  first  Italian 
era  to  supply  him  with  some  of  the  rarest  and 
choicest  examples  of  the  art.  The  commoner 
monastic  bindings  have  no  beauty  in  his  eyes,  and 
those  of  a  superior  order  and  more  costly  finish 
are  practically  interred  within  the  walls  of  great 
public  institutions,  from  which  they  will,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  never  emerge.  For  some  reason 
or  other  the  finest  binding  loses  its  glamour,  if 
not  its  interest,  when  exhibited  in  a  glass  case. 
We  must  have  these  things  for  our  own  before 
we  can  appreciate  them  to  the  full.  What  more 
melancholy  mortal  than  a  public  curator  trying 
to  work  himself  up  into  a  state  of  enthusiasm  as 
he  describes  the  objects  committed  to  his  care  ? 
They  are  mere  pots  and  pans  and  '  things,'  but 
yet  how  different  if  he  had  them  all  at  home  ! 

But  to  return  to  our  bindings.  Let  it  be  . 
observed  that  with  the  invention  of  printing,  and 
the  consequent  production  of  books  in  a  more 
portable  form,  the  modern  style  of  binding  was 
gradually  introduced.  These  were  the  days  of 
deep-toned  leathers,  ornamented  in  gold  and 
variegated  colours,  and  executed  for  wealthy  and 
powerful  Italian  families,  who  employed  skilful 
artists  to  draw  the  designs,  often  consisting  of 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         149 

geometrical  interfacings  or  foliage,  such  as  Maioli 
and  Grolier  rejoiced  in. 

This  style  of  ornamenting  leather  came  from 
the  East,  as  did  the  Saracenic  rope  ornament, 
which  was  perhaps  the  first  design  to  take  the 
fancy  of  Italian  workmen.  The  general  appear- 
ance of  this  rope  design  reminds  one  of  the  frontis- 
piece to  a  certain  '  Biography  of  Jack  Ketch,' 
which  someone  brought  out  a  few  years  ago.  The 
half-length  portrait  of  the  hero  is  within  a  grace- 
ful border  of  ropes  intertwined,  there  are  ropes 
tumbling  from  the  clouds,  and  he  holds  a  rope  in 
his  hand,  as  if  ready  to  begin.  Behind,  so  far  as 
my  memory  serves  me,  there  is  the  frowning 
portal  of  Newgate,  festooned  with  fetters.  A 
panel  of  Saracenic  rope-design  set  on  end  reminds 
one  of  this  frontispiece,  and  we  listen  instinctively 
for  the  tolling  of  the  prison  bell. 

The  celebrated  printer  Aldus  Manutius  seems 
to  have  been  the  first  to  rebel  against  such 
sinister  designs  as  these,  and,  moreover,  he  was 
the  friend  of  Jean  Grolier  and  Thommaso  Maioli, 
princes  among  book-lovers,  and  artists  by  nature. 
Aldus  often  bound  the  books  he  printed  in  smooth, 
rich  morocco,  tooled  in  gold  to  various  patterns 
of  elaborate  design,  and  to  him  we  doubtless  owe 
much  of  the  improvement  in  binding  which 
became  so  marked  at  the  beginning  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  His  were,  indeed,  publishers' 
bindings  produced  by  rule  of  thumb,  but  they  are 
not  on  that  account  less  worthy  of  interest,  for  the 


150  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

name  of  Aldus  is  one  to  conjure  with  in  all  things 
bookish. 

The  Thommaso  Maioli  to  whom  reference  has 
been  made  exercised  a  much  greater  influence 
than  Aldus  ever  did  in  the  matter  of  bindings,  for 
his  were  the  models  on  which  were  fashioned  the 
designs  of  later  collectors,  not  merely  of  Italy, 
but  of  France  and  other  European  countries. 
Maioli's  designs  are  free  and  open,  in  a  style 
suggestive  of  Eastern  influence,  but  reduced  to 
earth  and  reality  by  perpendicular  and  perfectly 
straight  lines.  His  library  was  open  to  his  friends, 
and  most  of  his  books  were  lettered  on  the  covers 
'  Tho.  Maioli  et  amicorum,'  qualified  sometimes 
by  other  words  of  different  import,  '  Ingratis 
servire  nephas.'  Very  likely  Maioli  was  on  occa- 
sion the  victim  of  some  too  ardent  bibliophile, 
who  would  think  nothing  of  borrowing,  and 
perhaps  also  of  some  Philistine,  who  left  ruin  in 
the  trail  of  his  dirty  or  heavy  fingers. 

So,  too,  Jean  Grolier,  whom  Dibdin  ludicrously 
turns  into  a  bookbinder,  but  who  was,  in  fact,  the 
French  contemporary  and  twin  soul  of  Maioli, 
chose  to  follow  the  traditions  of  all  true  book- 
lovers,  and  his  covers  also  bear  the  courteous 
invitation  to  friends,  '  lo  Grolierii  et  amicorum,' 
though  he  too  found  occasion  to  alter  it  from  time 
to  time. 

The  bindings  of  Maioli  and  Grolier,  worked  out 
and  finished  most  probably  at  Venice  for  the  most 
part,  are  highly  valued  by  collectors  all  over  the 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         151 

world,  and  they  are  indeed  worthy  of  all  the  atten- 
tion they  receive. 

The  bindings  of  Maioli  are  more  difficult  to 
meet  with  than  those  of  Grolier,  because  the 
library  of  the  latter  numbered  some  8,000  volumes, 
and  was  eventually  sold  by  auction  and  dispersed 
broadcast.  Grolier's  descendants  had  no  false 
sentiment  in  their  composition  ;  the  'amici '  were 
themselves,  and  they  acted  in  their  own  interests, 
in  strict  accordance  with  their  interpretation  of 
the  family  motto.  Besides,  in  those  days,  though 
the  love  of  books  raged  furiously  in  isolated 
breasts,  in  general  it  was  cold,  and  no  one  could 
probably  have  been  found  to  take  over  the  entire 
library,  or  even  that  considerable  portion  of  it 
which  at  the  last  lay  among  the  dust  and  cobwebs 
of  the  Hotel  de  Vic. 

Rarer  than  any  of  this  period,  however,  are  the 
medallion  bindings  of  DemetrioCanevari, physician 
to  Pope  Urban  VII. ,  who  was  living  in  the  year 
1600.  In  all  probability  Canevari  merely  inherited 
his  books,  for  their  covers  belong  to  an  earlier 
period.  Still,  whatever  the  fact  in  this  respect, 
they  are  called  after  his  name,  and  are  very  scarce, 
notwithstanding  that  the  whole  library  was  intact 
at  Genoa  until  1823.  Libri  thought  that  these 
delicate  and  elaborate  bindings  had  never  been 
surpassed,  and  certainly  they  are  very  beautiful, 
with  their  cameos  in  gold,  silver,  and  colours 
enriched  with  classical  portraits  and  mythological 
scenes. 


152  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

But  to  the  lover  of  bindings  it  is  Grolier,  Grolier,, 
Grolier ;  from  the  haunting  music  of  that  name 
there  is  no  escape,  and,  moreover,  Grolier  even  in 
death  was  great.  The  Emperor  Charles  V.  did 
not  disdain  to  follow  his  taste,  while  Francis  L 
was  completely  carried  away  by  it,  his  bindings,, 
as  soon  as  he  could  shake  off  the  early  influence 
of  Etienne  Roffet,  being  magnificently  Grolier- 
esque,  blazing  with  gold  and  the  brightest  colours. 
Then  came  Henri  II.  and  the  accomplished 
Diane  de  Poictiers,  whose  emblems,  the  crescent 
moon,  the  bow,  quiver  and  arrows  of  the  chase, 
are  invariably  found  associated  with  the  initial  of 
the  King.  Diane  was  the  royal  mistress,  and 
seems  to  have  had  a  passion  for  blending  the  two 
linked  D's  with  the  regal  H.  This  joint  mono- 
gram was  on  the  walls  and  furniture  of  her 
Chateau  of  Anet,  and  still  stares  us  out  of 
countenance  occasionally  from  behind  glass  doors. 
Diane,  however,  so  long  as  she  had  it  in  her 
power — that  is  to  say,  until  1559,  when  the  King 
died — did  everything  she  could  to  introduce  a 
taste  for  magnificent  and  sumptuous  bindings 
into  France ;  to  eclipse  once  and  for  all  time  the 
efforts  of  every  book-lover  who  had  preceded  her. 
In  a  measure  she  succeeded,  and  certainly  no  good 
books  come  to  us,  when  they  come  at  all,  which 
is  but  seldom,  breathing  more  of  romance  than 
these  volumes  which  Diane  treasured  till  her 
dying  day,  in  spite  of  Court  frowns  and  persecu- 
tion.] Her  library,  which  was  a  very  extensive 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         153 

one,  remained  intact  at  Anet  until  1723,  when  it 
was  sold. 

It  would  be  almost  an  endless  task  to  name  all 
the  patrons  of  artistic  bindings  who  lived  in 
France  up  to  about  the  time  of  the  Revolution. 
There  was  the  legitimate  Queen  of  Henri  II., 
Catherine  de  Medicis,  a  descendant  of  the  great 
Lorenzo,  called  the  Magnificent,  whose  books  are 
often  covered  in  white  calf,  powdered  with  golden 
flowers.  This  lady  was  an  enthusiastic  book- 
lover,  who,  when  she  died,  left  a  library  of  some 
4,000  volumes,  most  of  which  are  still  to  be  seen 
in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale. 

Then  we  must  not  forget  her  son,  Francis  II., 
who  married  the  unfortunate  Mary,  Queen  of 
Scots.  His  bindings,  whether  stamped  with  the 
golden  dolphin  or  with  a  monogram  in  which  his 
own  and  the  Queen's  initials  are  interlaced,  are 
extremely  scarce,  and  worth  much  gold.  Francis 
was  only  seventeen  when  he  died,  and  had,  conse- 
quently, no  time  to  become  thoroughly  saturated 
with  the  intense  longing  for  beautiful  decorations 
which  probably  did  much  to  set  Catherine  de 
Medicis  and  the  fair  Diane  by  the  ears.  His 
younger  brother,  afterwards  Henri  III.,  had 
greater  opportunities  for  indulging  his  tastes  in 
this  respect,  and  the  history  of  his  bibliopegic 
life,  so  to  speak,  is  full  of  strange  surprises. 

Like  all  other  bindings  with  a  history,  specimens 
from  the  library  of  this  gloomy  and  taciturn 
monarch  are  very  rarely  met  with.  They  are 


1 54   The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

distinctly  worth  looking  at,  however,  especially  by 
those  of  a  morbid  turn  of  mind.  They  are  more 
suggestive  than  the  Saracenic  rope  style,  and 
infinitely  more  eloquent  of  woe.  Henri  ought  to 
have  married  the  Princess  Conde,  but  she  died, 
and  the  young  King,  then  about  twenty-four  years 
old,  and  apparently  influenced  by  the  example  of 
his  father  and  mother,  turned  for  consolation  to 
his  library,  and  the  designing  of  emblems  con- 
genial to  his  mood. 

These  consist,  at  least  at  this  period,  when  his 
grief  was  young  and  fresh,  of  skulls  garnished  with 
cross-bones,  tears,  and  other  emblems  of  the 
grave.  They  are,  in  their  way,  absolutely  unique, 
and  much  more  remarkable  than  the  curled  snake 
of  Colbert  or  the  three  towers  of  Madame  de 
Pompadour.  The  bindings  of  Henri  III.,  though 
uncongenial  to  most  tastes,  are  of  excellent  design 
and  workmanship,  for  Nicholas  and  Clovis  Eve 
were  living  in  his  day,  and  better  artists  than 
they  proved  themselves  to  be  it  would  be  hopeless 
to  look  for.  It  was  one  or  other  of  the  brothers 
who  introduced  the  fanfare  style,  which  resolved 
itself  finally  into  a  profusion  of  small  flourished 
ornaments,  so  closely  worked  together  that  a 
volume  bound  in  this  way  looked  as  though 
picked  out  ethereally  with  sprays,  scrolls,  and 
showers  of  golden  rain.  The  fanfare  style  was, 
so  it  is  said,  introduced  to  put  an  end  to  the 
suicidal  gloom  that  had  overtaken  the  Court  of 
Henri  III. 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         1 55 

That  monarch,  though  a  bad  man,  was  prob- 
ably the  most  original  thinker  in  the  matter  of 
bindings  who  ever  lived,  for  De  Thou's  plan  of 
inventing  a  fresh  design  every  time  he  got  married 
resolved  itself  into  nothing  more  than  a  series  of 
heraldic  changes,  and  De  Thou  is  generally  credited 
with  a  considerable  amount  of  ingenuity,  and  re- 
garded as  a  person  distinctly  worth  collecting  on 
account  of  the  variations  in  which  he  is  found, 
and  for  other  reasons.  Every  book  which  touches, 
however  remotely,  on  the  subject  of  bindings 
never  fails  to  give  the  armorial  bearings  of 
De  Thou  at  different  periods  of  his  life ;  and  we 
must  pass  on  to  Marguerite  de  Valois ;  not  the 
celebrated  Queen  of  Navarre  who  wrote  the 
'  Heptameron  '  in  her  youth,  but  the  daughter  of 
Henri  II.,  already  mentioned  as  a  great  lover  of 
bindings.  Marguerite  very  appropriately,  having 
regard  to  the  origin  of  her  name,  chose  designs  of 
daisies,  which  she  placed  in  oval  compartments 
bearing  the  quarterings  of  Valois,  the  whole  being 
surrounded  with  leafy  and  branching  scroll-work. 
Clovis  Eve  was  her  binder,  and  the  work  he 
turned  out  at  this  period  is  in  his  best  style. 

The  history  of  bookbinding  takes  a  curious  turn 
at  this  epoch.  Hitherto  we  have  heard  more  of 
the  patron  than  of  the  artist,  a  state  of  things 
which  from  this  time  forth  exists  no  longer.  I 
would  not  commit  myself  to  the  assertion  that 
Marguerite  de  Valois,  who,  by  the  way,  died  in 
1615,  was  the  last  of  the  great  collectors  who 


156  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

eclipsed  the  reputation  of  the  binders  they  em- 
ployed ;  but  I  know  that  about  this  period  we 
begin  to  hear  more  of  the  workman  and  less  of 
the  patron.  When  everybody  of  the  least  im- 
portance begins  to  collect  books,  and  to  have 
them  bound  in  specially  designed  covers,  the 
artist  rises  on  the  ashes  of  the  amateur,  whose 
day  is  from  that  time  forth  over  and  gone,  except 
in  the  limited  circle  in  which  he  moves.  So  it 
was  at  the  epoch  which  immediately  followed  the 
death  of  Marguerite  de  Valois.  The  Eves  had 
forced  their  way  into  notice  in  spite  of  the  over- 
whelming presence  of  Henri  II.,  Diane  de 
Poictiers  and  Charles  IX.,  Henri  III.  and  IV., 
and  other  less-exalted  persons  ;  and  now  Le 
Gascon  made  his  presence  felt  still  more  forcibly 
than  they. 

Le  Gascon,  who  is  identified  with  one  Flori- 
mond  Badier,  introduced  a  style  of  ornamenta- 
tion known  as  pointille,  consisting  of  graceful  geo- 
metrical designs  worked  out  with  innumerable 
minute  gold  dots,  usually  on  a  ground  of  bright 
scarlet.  The  effect  of  a  perfectly  fresh  and  bright 
binding  by  Le  Gascon  must  have  been  brilliant  in 
the  extreme ;  but,  alas !  the  cost  was  something 
phenomenal,  and  the  style,  after  being  parodied 
and  imitated  by  mechanical  process,  finally  died 
out  in  France  some  thirty-five  years  after  its 
introduction.  Mazarin  was  the  great  patron  of 
Le  Gascon,  and  many  books  which  once  be- 
longed to  the  great  Cardinal  are  found  with 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         157 

ornamentation,  arms  and  motto  — '  His  Fulta 
Manebunt ' — laboriously  picked  out  in  the  beauti- 
ful pointille  style. 

During  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  during  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth,  the 
French  bookbinders  had  no  equal,  and  if  they 
afterwards  deteriorated,  they  had  still  many 
great  names  among  their  ranks.  Padeloup's 
binding  of  a  '  Daphne  et  Chloe  '  of  1718,  with  the 
arms  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  then  Regent  of 
France,  is  a  masterpiece  ;  and  then  there  are  his 
bindings  in  mosaic,  looking  like  lace-work,  and 
the  masterly  designs  worked  out  for  Madame  de 
Pompadour,  Queen  Maria  Leczinska,  and  many 
other  celebrities.  Derome,  the  Abbe  Du  Sueil, 
and  Monnier  were  all  fine  binders,  whose  work  is 
eagerly  sought  for.  And  then  comes  the  French 
Revolution,  which  for  the  time  being  seems  to 
have  utterly  demoralized  art  in  all  its  branches. 
Most  modern  collectors  who  affect  notable  bind- 
ings have  to  look  to  later  days,  when  the  surge 
and  storm  of  the  turmoil  had  passed  away,  and 
when  Thouvenin,  Bauzonnet,  Duru,  Trantz,  Lortic, 
Marius-Michel,  and  many  more,  were  in  their 
prime. 

English  bindings,  so  far  as  past  times  are  con- 
cerned, were  never  remarkable  for  refinement  or 
taste.  Velvet  or  silk,  frequently  embroidered  and 
tasselled,  was  often  used  for  royal  books,  and  we 
also  meet  with  pasteboard  covered  with  leather 
and  studded  with  gilt  ornaments  on  the  back. 


158     The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

There  is,  however,  not  a  trace  of  the  genius  of 
Le  Gascon  or  Derome  in  any  of  these  produc- 
tions, and  the  designs  show  very  little  originality. 
Occasionally,  however,  an  English  binding  is  pro- 
duced which,  bound  in  morocco — the  introduction 
of  which  is  placed  to  the  credit  of  James  I. — has 
an  extremely  good  effect,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
'  Pontificate  Romanum,'  1595,  now  in  the  British 
'Museum.  This  specimen  is  elaborately  gold- 
tooled  with  the  arms  and  badges  of  the  King.  A 
facsimile  of  it  will  be  found  facing  page  228  of 
Mr.  W.  Salt  Brassington's  '  History  of  the  Art  of 
Bookbinding.'  It  is  a  clever  and  characteristic 
piece  of  work  in  brown  morocco,  and  gives  a 
very  good  idea  of  the  highest  form  of  English 
art  of  the  period  which  it  was  possible  to  pro- 
duce. 

The  English,  however,  have  never  been  at  any 
period  particularly  conspicuous  for  their  talent  in 
the  art  of  designing  book-covers,  and  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  majority  of  well-informed  persons 
who  have  not  made  a  study  of  this  branch  of  art 
would,  in  case  they  were  asked  to  enumerate  half 
a  dozen  good  binders  of  English  nationality,  find 
themselves  unable  to  mention  more  than  one. 
They  would  begin  and  end  with  the  talented  but 
eccentric  and  thirsty  Roger  Payne,  whose  bind- 
ings are  often  original  and  elegant,  and  who 
might,  had  he  been  able  to  keep  himself  respect- 
able, have  attained  an  excellence  worthy  of  the 
palmy  days  of  France.  But  Payne  chose  to  live 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         159 

in  a  tumbledown  garret,  denuded  of  plaster,  and 
spent  his  money  in  the  proportion  of 

For  bacon      ...     i  half-penny 
For  liquor      ...     i  shilling 

He  was,  moreover,  dirty  and  ill-conditioned , 
and  the  only  thing  that  saved  him  from  utter  ruin 
even  in  his  youth  was  the  painful  necessity  of 
having  to  work  for  a  very  long  time  in  order  to 
earn  what  any  binder  of  the  present  day  would 
look  upon  as  a  trifle.  Nevertheless,  Payne  was, 
when  he  applied  himself,  a  most  conscientious 
artist,  and,  although  the  owner  of  some  costly 
manuscript  or  volume  would  certainly  have  been 
horrified  to  find  it  lying  in  a  corner  of  his  garret, 
waiting  its  turn  in  company  with  an  old  shoe  or 
two,  and  the  remains  of  the  food  which  Payne 
had  been  consuming  a  week  or  two  before,  yet  he 
might  be  sure  that  he  would  get  his  treasure  back 
in  the  end,  not  the  worse  for  its  company,  but 
bound  in  a  style  that  could  not  be  equalled  any- 
where but  in  Paris,  and  not  even  there  at  the 
same  small  cost. 

Some  of  Payne's  bindings — for  he  had  his 
moods — are  beautiful,  classical,  and  surprisingly 
artistic,  and,  notwithstanding  his  failing,  it  is  clear 
that  he  worked  hard  on  occasion.  In  fact,  it  is  the 
opinion  of  many  authorities  that  no  English-born 
binder  has  ever  succeeded,  from  that  day  to  this,, 
in  approaching  the  genius  of  Payne.  Walther, 
Staggemeier,  and  Kalthoeber,  though  they  worked 


1 60  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

in  London,  were  all  Germans.  Lewis  may  or 
may  not  have  equalled  his  predecessor,  and  the 
same  remark  applies  to  Riviere  and  Bedford, 
whose  names,  however,  are  too  contemporary 
to  invite  comparison.  Besides,  the  question  is 
one  of  individual  preference,  after  all,  and  any 
binder,  however  excellent,  may  have  to  yield  the 
palm  to  another  in  some  specific  matters  of 
detail. 

The  glamour  of  a  binding,  indeed,  vanishes 
when  criticism  steps  forward.  The  indescribable 
something,  which  is  at  the  same  time  everything, 
falls  to  pieces  the  instant  dissecting  implements 
are  produced,  and  the  effect  is  gone  on  the  instant. 
The  whole  work  of  art  must  be  regarded,  and  no 
single  part  of  it,  and  we  may  then  dream,  if  we 
like,  of  all  the  strange  things  that  happened  when 
it  was  ushered  into  the  world.  It  is  a  pity  that 
antique  and  historic  bindings  are  so  extremely 
difficult  to  procure.  No  one  but  a  millionaire 
could  hope  to  stock  his  shelves  with  a  representa- 
tive assortment  of  bindings  of  different  epochs 
and  schools,  and  even  he  might  spend  his  whole 
life  in  searching  for  them. 

There  is  something  in  a  binding  which  fasci- 
nates, and  yet  hurls  back  the  inspired  sneer  of 
Robbie  Burns  with  interest : 

*  Through  and  through  the  inspired  leaves, 

Ye  maggots,  make  your  windings  ; 
But,  oh  !  respect  his  lordship's  taste, 
And  spare  his  golden  bindings.' 


The  Glamour  of  Bindings         1 6 1 

Yes !  some  bindings  are  of  greater  interest,  from 
every  possible  point  of  view,  than  the  leaves  they 
protect,  and  but  for  their  kindly  care  other  leaves 
which  exist  among  our  choicest  possessions  might 
have  been  utterly  destroyed.  Many  a  book  has 
been  saved  from  death  by  the  glamour  of  its 
cover,  and  will  yet  be  saved. 


ii 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   HAMMER  AND   THE   END. 

THE  past  ten  years  have  witnessed  rather 
more  than  600  high-class  sales  of  books 
by  auction  in  London  alone,  and  the  vast 
majority  of  the  collections  dispersed  to  the  winds 
during  that  period  of  time  were  not  fifty,  nor 
forty,  and,  at  a  venture,  not  thirty  years  old. 
Nay !  it  would  be  tolerably  safe  to  go  still  further, 
and  to  say  that  the  life  of  a  library  is,  as  a  rule,  less 
than  half  that  of  a  man.  Though  it  may  consist 
of  the  products  of  antiquity,  it  has  but  a  short 
period  of  existence  before  it  as  a  whole  ;  and  as 
book  is  added  to  book,  and  manuscript  to  manu- 
script, and  the  sum  total  of  volumes  of  either 
kind  continues  to  increase,  so,  too,  it  is  all  but 
certain  that  the  closing  scene  of  its  dissolution 
draws  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  end. 

Generally  speaking,  the  larger  and  more  im- 
portant a  collection,  the  shorter  its  life.  There 
are  exceptions,  but  they  only  prove  the  rule,  which 
may  fairly  be  described  as  universal.  Books  are 
a  valuable  species  of  personal  property,  and  next- 


The  Hammer  and  the  End        163 

of-kin  often  prove  unsympathetic  and  unsenti- 
mental in  the  custody  of  them  ;  besides,  books 
cannot  be  divided  so  satisfactorily  as  coin,  and 
the  first  and  almost  necessary  step  is  to  turn  them 
into  money  when  an  estate  has  to  be  distributed 
among  many.  This  is  the  reason  why  there  are 
so  few  great  collections  in  the  hands  of  private 
individuals,  and  why  they  are  in  jeopardy  every 
day  and  hour. 

In  this  respect,  then,  the  life  of  a  book  is  even 
less  than  that  of  a  man — an  analogy  which  in  no 
wise  minimizes  the  value  of  existence  to  either. 
A  good  deal  of  enjoyment  can  be  crowded  into  a 
compass  of  thirty  years,  and  much  information 
may  be  obtained  in  that  period  if  only  it  be  sought 
for  aright.  To  ask  cui  bono  ?  is  a  beggarly  inter- 
rogatory which  might  with  equal  force  be  thrust 
before  all  life's  actions,  and  I  would  not  have  it 
supposed  that  in  my  opinion  it  is  a  proper  or  even 
a  satisfactory  question  to  put  where  books  are 
concerned.  I  only  deplore  the  fact  that  to  accu- 
mulate is  usually  to  scatter  the  seeds  of  a  short- 
lived enjoyment  which  dies  in  October.  Hence 
it  is  that  lovers  of  books  have  been  known  to 
cheat  time  and  the  hour,  and  to  gratify  their  own 
inclinations  as  fully  as  possible,  taking  steps  to 
secure  their  treasures  from  the  hammer  and  the 
end,  and  have  with  these  objects  established 
national  libraries  of  the  very  utmost  importance 
— libraries  which  may  certainly  be  destroyed  in 
some  great  conflagration  or  by  the  rush  of  shot 

II— 2 


1 64  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

and  shell,  but  can  never  be  dispersed  for  the  sake 
of  the  money  they  would  produce,  and  will 
practically,  therefore,  remain  intact  for  many 
centuries. 

This,  it  would  seem,  is  really  the  only  effectual 
way  of  preserving  the  good  and  permanent  things 
of  this  life  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  come 
after  us,  for  the  hammer,  though  it  never  destroys 
directly,  does  so  indirectly,  if  it  be  a  fact  that  the 
whole  is  greater  in  every  quality,  save  number, 
than  the  parts  which  compose  it.  Here  is  an 
instance  of  the  contrary  plan  of  hedging  round 
our  possessions  with  stipulations  and  directions 
designed  for  their  preservation.  Among  the  great 
failures  of  book-men  let  this  be  chronicled. 

The  mind  travels  back  some  five  or  six  years 
to  one  of  the  high- priests  of  a  fast-decaying  cult. 
He  lodged  at  a  farm-house  which,  being  in  the 
direct  path  of  advancing  streets,  has  perhaps  by 
this  time  been  pulled  down.  At  the  time  of 
which  I  speak  it  stood  in  an  ocean  of  mud,  not 
far  from  the  highroad — a  relic  in  the  midst  of 
surroundings  so  painfully  new  that  few  strangers 
who  wandered  that  way  failed  to  pause  at  the 
wicket-gate,  and  gaze  on  the  thatched  roof  and 
warped  windows  that  time  had  doomed.  Once 
or  twice  a  year,  seldom  oftener — for  book-men  of 
the  type  of  the  one  who  held  sway  there  hate  to  be 
disturbed — I  used  to  claim  admission  to  the  one 
moderately  large  room  that  the  house  possessed. 
Its  walls  were  lined  with  books  from  floor  to 


The  Hammer  and  the  End        165 

ceiling,  and  a  number  of  movable  cases  mapped 
out  the  surface  into  narrow  alleys.  Some  thou- 
sands of  volumes,  all  bound  alike,  and  consisting 
chiefly  of  historical  works  in  English  and  Latin, 
must  have  been  here  stored.  There  were  many 
rare  books,  and  all  were  good  of  their  kind,  and 
most  had  been  well  read.  The  ways  of  their 
owner,  the  lifelong  occupant  of  this  crumbling 
cottage,  were  peculiar.  He  would  get  up  at  ten 
in  the  morning  to  the  minute,  and  after  breakfast 
take  a  walk  in  the  fields,  or  perhaps  to  the  city, 
returning  at  five  precisely,  winter  and  summer 
alike.  He  was  so  accurate  in  his  movements 
that  people  used  to  set  their  watches  by  him,  the 
new  clock  being  generally  out  of  gear.  At  half- 
past  five  he  drank  tea  out  of  an  enormous  basin, 
and  smoked  a  clay  pipe,  which  it  was  his  pleasure 
to  light  with  a  burning  coal  or  at  the  chimney  of 
his  lamp.  Matches  he  detested,  on  account  of 
the  sulphur,  which,  he  said,  fouled  the  tobacco 
and  made  it  unbearable.  At  seven  the  business 
of  the  day  commenced,  and  was  continued  till 
two,  and  sometimes  three,  in  the  morning — the 
business  of  reading  hard  without  cessation,  except 
to  take  a  pull  at  the  basin  or  to  fill  and  light  the 
pipe.  Very  pleasant  were  the  winter  evenings, 
when  the  wind  howled  round  the  gables  of  the 
house,  as  it  often  did,  and  the  night  was  as  black 
as  pitch.  This  had  gone  on  for  thirty  years  with- 
out much,  if  any,  variation,  until  one  day  the 
bookworm  was  found  dead  at  his  post,  sur- 


1 66  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

rounded  by  the  only  real  friends  he  had  in  the 
world,  for  the  safety  of  which  he  had  provided  as 
follows : 

By  his  will,  made  some  twelve  months  pre- 
viously, he  directed  that  the  whole  of  his  property 
of  every  description,  books  excepted,  should  be 
turned  into  money  and  divided  between  two 
persons  named  in  equal  shares.  The  books  he 
bequeathed  to  another  worm,  who  lived  a  mile  or 
two  away,  and  who  used  occasionally  to  drop  in 
to  compare  notes,  subject,  however,  to  the  express 
condition  that  they  should  neither  be  sold  nor 
otherwise  parted  with,  and  be  kept  in  the  same 
state  in  which  they  then  were.  For  their  further 
preservation  he  directed  that  the  legatee  should 
have  the  use  of  the  books  for  his  life  only,  and 
that  after  his  death  they  should  become  the  abso- 
lute property  of  a  third  person,  at  that  time  com- 
paratively young  in  years,  a  good  scholar,  and  a 
man  of  money.  One  would  certainly  have  thought 
that  these  precautions  would  have  sufficed  to 
preserve  this  library  intact  for  a  very  considerable 
length  of  time  ;  but,  as  events  turned  out,  it  was 
carted  off  within  a  month  and  sold  piecemeal  by 
auction  to  the  highest  bidders. 

In  the  first  place,  it  seems,  the  owner  for  life 
had  looked  over  the  books,  and  not  finding  them 
sufficiently  representative  of  the  particular  branch 
of  study  to  which  he  devoted  himself,  went  to  the 
reversioner  and  proposed  a  joint  sale.  The  latter 
demurred,  not,  indeed,  to  the  general  principle,  but 


The  Hammer  and  the  End         167 

to  the  suggested  division  of  the  proceeds.  H  e  said 
that  a  life  interest  in  the  hands  of  a  man  of  fifty 
was  worth  less  than  a  prospective  inheritance  of 
the  whole  by  one  much  younger,  and  in  this  he 
was  right.  An  actuary  very  quickly  calculated 
the  shares,  and  then  came  the  hammer  and  the 
end. 

There  are  hundreds  and  thousands  of  such 
cases,  but  not  many  bookworms  of  the  type  I 
have  mentioned.  They  are  fast  dying  out,  for 
they  belong  to  a  very  old  school,  which  has  no 
part  or  lot  in  these  go-ahead  days.  It  would  be 
pitiable  to  hear  a  graybeard  say  farewell  to  a 
class  of  boys,  and  to  see  him  totter  to  the  door, 
which,  as  Epictetus  says,  is  always  open ;  and 
still  more  pitiable  would  it  be  if  we  could  enter 
into  his  thoughts  and  regrets.  Fortunately,  we 
are  as  yet  spared  the  pain  of  such  partings  as 
these,  for  our  school  is  new — brand  new — and 
what  few  old-time  book-men  are  left  feel  out  of 
place  therein.  Rather  do  they  regard  us  in  the 
light  of  merry  roisterers  growing  wise  by  painful 
stages,  whose  presence  is  not  as  yet  mellowed  by 
experience,  nor  sanctified  by  the  touch  of  time. 

And  so  there  are  two  schools  of  book-men,  one 
closed  to  all  but  the  very  few,  the  other  open  to 
all  who  choose  to  enter,  and  in  each  there  is  a 
table  laden  with  delights.  But  at  the  head  of  each 
alike  sits  the  skeleton  of  Egyptian  orgies,  veiled, 
perhaps,  after  the  manner  of  later  and  more 
effeminate  times,  but  still  there.  It  is  the  same 


1 68  The  Romance  of  Book-collecting 

skeleton  that  startled  the  Epicurean  in  the  hey- 
day of  his  pleasures,  and  threatened  him  ere  the 
banquet  was  half  over.  So  also  it  menaces  us, 
for  it  clutches  a  hammer,  and  we  know  that  it 
will  very  shortly  proclaim 


THE   END. 


Elliot  Stock,  62,  Paternoster  Row,  London. 


FOURTEEN  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


SCHOOL  LIBRA*V 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 
on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 


Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

SEP  2  0  1956 

DEC  2  9  1953 

LD  21-100m-2,'55 
(B139s22)476 


- 


General  Library 
iversity  of  California 
Berkeley 


M534130 


